AIM IS TO WIDEN A VALID SQUAD – P.GHEDIN

When addressing a Press Conference at the Excelsior Hotel earlier today national coach Pietro Ghedin stressed the importance of his squad improving as a unit while doing our best to widen the choice of valid players.     He was addressing the journalists prior to tomorrow’s friendly international against Northern Ireland, a match which is intended as further preparation to Malta’s next commitments in the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil Group B matches against Bulgaria and Italy next month. The Italian mentioned the need of having ‘more players capable of drawing esteem within the ranks of the national team. Further improvement of the players’ individual skills also shown in collective play is also being constantly sought,’ he said. ’I’d love to have more of our players engaged with foreign teams. Meanwhile, I’ll try and give a try to new players. The door is open for them, especially when we have established players who are currently unfit.’ He said that Roderick Briffa will be missing and will be replaced by Paul Fenech, while Daniel Bogdanovic is hoping to be declared fit by the doctor. When asked about a possible debut by Jacob Borg the Italian replied ‘I hope so.’ ‘Tomorrow we are playing against Northern Ireland, who recently held Portugal away to a draw in a World Cup qualifier. Definitely, they have valid players and I hope we would be up to it when confronting them. We have to take this match very seriously,’ Ghedin said. Michael Mifsud said that the players are working in unison. ‘We have new faces in the squad and this makes for competition for a place in the team. We were somewhat unlucky when we played the big teams recently, but when facing others of our standard we got the results. ‘The Irish are a tough team and our 4-3-2-1 formation will try and do something better technically. We also have to be at our best mentally,’ the Malta top-scorer remarked.