Ġużi Alamango

The art of goalkeeping is ingrained in an individual.

A goalkeeper is born and not made. In fact, while the majority of youngsters prefer to play upfield, a few others show an early inclination for wearing the no.1 jersey. Of course, like in everything else, there are exceptions to the rule and our personality this week was one of them.

Ġużi Alamango was one of the best goalkeepers of his generation but at first he preferred to play upfield. However, the urge to go between the sticks was too great to resist and at the end he succumbed to the call.

Alamango came from a great footballing family which included Floriana stalwarts as Ġuże Alamango, who started the legend in the 1920s, Johnnie, Żarenu and Salvu.

Like many of his peers, Alamango first kicked a ball on the Floriana Parade Ground. He played at right-half for the Ajax B team but when he was picked to play for the Floriana Minors and other junior teams, he insisted to play in goal.

Floriana were well-served at the time by goalkeeper Frankie Busuttil but Alamango’s spectacular performances in the Second and Third Division teams soon won him promotion to the senior squad.

Busuttil moved on and Alamango soon established himself as Floriana’s first-team goalkeeper.

He made his Division One debut for Floriana on December 12, 1949 in a 2-0 victory over Valletta. The ‘derby’ was one of the highlights of the season in those days. The atmosphere was electric and it must have been a harrowing experience for a young and budding goalkeeper but Alamango came out of it with flying colours.

That season, he only played six league matches but it was enough for him to win the first of five championship medals.

Between 1949 and 1957 Alamango only played 48 games for Floriana. Most of them were punctuated by suspensions.

In 1957, he left and joined Marsa in the Second Division. In 1958-59 the Red/Blues were promoted and Alamango spent the next two seasons in the top flight.

In 1960, however, he was handed a hefty suspension which kept him out of the game for most of the season. He returned to league football on June 5, 1960 for the last game of the season.

In 1960-61 he returned to Floriana but stayed for only one season and the following summer he retired from football.

During his career Alamango won five league championships, five FA Trophy and two Cassar Cup medals. He was also picked to represent Malta against visiting foreign teams on seven occasions.

Alamango was a controversial figure but he will always be remembered as a highly talented and spectacular goalkeeper who could, if he wanted, have made a far greater contribution to the local game.

A wrong interpretation

In his weekly contribution Shadows from the past (no.976, The Times March 21) Carmel Baldacchino wrote about the 1973/74 FA Trophy final between Sliema Wanderers and Floriana which was played at the Empire Stadium on Sunday, May 26, 1974, and refereed by yours truly.

Reading the article, entitled ‘Ref Briguglio irks Greens’, I noticed that the part where I was mentioned featured only minor changes from the original match report on The Times. I didn’t seem to have pleased the reporter on that particular day, although he did agree with me on the most important decision of the match.

In the 40th minute, I awarded Sliema a penalty which they converted to take the FA Trophy home. However, what irked me then was the reporter’s wrong interpretation of the laws of the game. His most blatant lapse was when he took me to task for allegedly denying Floriana a penalty for what he himself described as “a dangerous play action”.

Now dangerous play is sanctioned by an indirect free-kick and this confirmed that I made the correct decision. His misinter-pretation of the laws caused me a lot of hassle.

In his write-up, Mr Baldacchino, in trying to circumvent this incident by changing the wording, reopened the wound. His description might have given the impression that, although I was aware that it was a penalty, I opted for an indirect free-kick in the Sliema penalty area.

Surely this is not constructive criticism.

For the record, this was one of the nine FA Trophy finals I controlled in my refereeing career.

Antonio P. Briguglio, Qormi