Dana Farrugia – Seeking To Take The Game Toward New Highs

Dana Farrugia is a relatively new face in football in Malta but has quickly settled into the upper echelons with the aim of driving forward progress. Starting with the Birkirkara women’s team committee three years ago, Farrugia expanded her work into the Malta Football Association (MFA), more recently entrusted with leading the committee to form the National Women’s Football Strategy.

Beyond her work in football, Dana Farrugia brings a specialization in business and IT, which hold various crucial elements that have become entwined with the game. She is ready to implement this knowhow to drive Malta’s football scene forward as the first female Vice President within the Malta Football Assocation (MFA), if elected this Friday 15^th March.

Considering all of this, The Sporting Fan met with Dana Farrugia to discuss her story in the game, the women’s football national strategy and what she is seeking to implement if elected to the role.

Eleanor Saliba (ES): So, you started your work in women’s football around three years ago, but you’ve followed football since you were young. Can you walk me a bit through your past in the game and joining the Birkirkara women’s team committee?

Dana Farrugia (DF): My first memories of the game are playing street football in Isla, Cottonera. At the time, it was not common for girls to be encouraged to play football, in fact formally at school I played more netball, basketball and volleyball. So, my exposure to football was street football, but it was something I enjoyed watching on television and even went to watch games abroad as I grew.

However, I started hands-on work in football in Malta when Birkirkara approached me a few years ago. It was a surprise to me to be honest at the time. I sort of questioned the prominence that women’s football had in Malta, because I knew it was gathering pace abroad, but maybe in Malta it was not as prominent. In my professional career I always had quite demanding jobs, but I always enjoyed having something recreational and I like to give back. This, besides promoting women role in society.

While working with Birkirkara’s committee I realized how much passion these women play with, but that unfortunately it is not recognized or not recognized enough. So, once I started, I was certain that there was no turning back for me to try to do my best to support them. Birkirkara are a stellar team locally, made up of a lot of players who also play with the national team. So, I’m very proud of them, not only Birkirkara, but on a national level. It’s satisfactory for me to contribute my small bit to everything that they do and it’s great to see what they are achieving.

ES: With regards to your work with Birkirkara’s women’s team committee, what would you say are highlights of the work that you put in that pushed the team to new heights?

DF: At club level, there is a lot of investment in the players and they deserve every minute you invest in them. So, as a committee there is a lot of investment in them. It’s an ongoing process so you must take care of them and provide them with certain wellbeing that is continuous and of a certain standard. For example, provide a personal physical trainer and physiotherapists. You must take care of the wellbeing that a player requires, ice-baths, massages, as well as to motivate them and to care how they are feeling. You must be close to them and that they can speak with you candidly. I think this is a mix of ingredients that gets the team to succeed.

I cannot tell you that they get a financial reward, because women’s football in Malta unfortunately does not result in some big payment or that we gave them some bonus to incentivize them. I actually think the players are more motivated by things that keep them fit and enable them to perform better. However, certainly as a committee we put a lot of emphasis on wellbeing.

ES: You’ve also held positions within boards at the Malta Football Association (MFA). What led you to be interested in taking this next step into the Association?

DF: It was quite a surprise when the MFA approached me. I had been with Birkirkara for around one and a half years at which point the MFA decided internally that they wanted to give women’s football more prominence. At this point a committee was created, which I was tasked with leading. The committee involves various members coming from different backgrounds, both technical and at club level. We were tasked with handling women’s football on a national level and also to develop a strategy for women’s football for the next four years.

I think my studies (including a Master in Business Administration), together with my past experience, gave me the necessary toolset to lead in this regard. Of course, the MFA gave us the parameters within which we had to work, which were stipulated by UEFA and FIFA. For every pillar that they dictate, we found specialists to support us in understanding where we are currently, where we want to go and how to get there.

Besides creating the strategy, the MFA created a role specifically for a woman to hold within the Executive Board to represent the interests of women’s football. An election was held between the clubs partaking in the women’s sector and I was elected. So, I’ve held that position for one and a half years as well.  

ES: Can you elaborate more on your role in leading the process to create this National Strategy and the main outcomes?

DF: We spent one and a half years working on this, until we created the final draft. From my end I met with a lot of people who created strategies for associations abroad for their own women’s sectors. I read their strategies, observing the similarities of their game to ours and what practices they adopted, in search of finding what is relevant to us. These include Scandinavian countries, Ireland, Scotland, Italy and Croatia, because there are similarities in their women’s game to ours. I also had the opportunity to meet with officials who are driving this focus on the women’s game. Something that consistently cropped up is the importance of having standards and regulatory aspects so that we protect and elevate the standard of the women’s game.

It is premature to speak about the outcomes, but I can promise you that whatever happens in the election, the committee must continue to work on the women’s football strategy and establish this formally. We worked on the strategy during the time that we were easing away from the Covid period, however we were still affected. Despite this, we still managed to do a lot of work and meetings with clubs and various stakeholders. So, in this regard, the relevant stakeholders know exactly on which pillars we are focusing on. These main pillars involve governance and also the national team, on which we worked very closely with the coach Manuela Tesse, which is very important. Besides this, there was the survey associated, which already hinted at the pillars that we had to work on.

However, it is only respectful to wait for the election to pass, so that the elected President has the mandate to lead and approve the strategy that they believe in. There is a cost associated so we must assess what is possible to do in the next four years and what is not possible, and then start the work to achieve it.

ES: According to the press-release of April 2023, the National Women’s Football Strategy was supposed to have been published in September of last year. Can you explain the delay?

DF: Although the strategy is not yet published, there is a finalised draft. We finished creating the strategy in December, but in September it was discussed internally to launch the final draft. However, in November the President of the MFA announced that he will be calling the election this year, so we felt that ethically we should wait until we know whether the President is given another mandate and then finalise the strategy. In this way if the President changes, and perhaps the newly elected President has other ideas, we do not impose this on them.

The election was due to happen at the end of the year, but it was called earlier. However, the aim is for the election to pass and then we can discuss this at Executive level and launch the strategy.

ES: What would you say are some highlights of your work within the MFA?

DF: In some cases we did not wait for the strategy to go into effect and we’ve already started implement things in this regard. So, for example one of the efforts was to ensure that a player is not discriminated against if she must go on maternity leave. I’m very proud of this, which passed from the Executive Board.

ES: I agree that this is a positive thing overall, but as we he have said a lot of the players in Malta do not have a full-time employment as footballers, so it does not apply to them presently. So, is there some work being done to create some support for the currently active players in this regard?

DF: Women’s football is all amateur in Malta, besides the ones that play with the national team. However, one hopes that clubs are not so insensitive to discriminate against players who are in the process of having a child, adopting a child or maybe even miscarrying a child. One hopes that the clubs take care of this with their coaches and specialists. At Birkirkara we had a player who had a child, is performing at top level with the team and is also called up with the national team.

The strategy is setting up a vision for the next four years, within which we must drill in the specifics of where we want to go. Obviously, these things will affect the regulatory aspect, and this is where we will handle the specifics. However, away from the regulatory aspects, players will find support both in the MFA and there is also the Malta Football Players Association (MFPA) which supports players.

As noted earlier, Dana Farrugia holds a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from Henley. She brings experience in business and IT, having spent fourteen years in Ministry for the Economy, Investment and Small Businesses. She was also Director of Malta Enterprise in 2017 and then of the Malta Start-up Foundation (2018), before becoming CEO of Tech.mt (2020).

ES: You bring a lot of background in business, with focus or overlap in IT. What would you say are relevant elements that you bring from this background that you are looking to implement or have implemented into football?

DF: I think one should look at their football team or club as a product. It may sound a bit crude, because ultimately these are humans. However, to make your product attractive you must approach it from a commercial aspect. Something that we lack locally across the board in both men’s and women’s football, is the way one positions the product from a marketing perspective and how much investment you put into this.

So, for example, when looking at players you must consider their nutrition, kits, their general appearance, their motivation and wellbeing. I believe investing in these things will bring a social return, because you are helping them to elevate their image and also their performance in the sport. Additionally, it makes the sport more attractive to watch. I’m not saying that people won’t watch the sport if there aren’t these things, but we are living in a reality that there’s something that detracting people from going to the grounds to watch matches. I’m not saying players are the only factor, you have to look at the product as a whole, including infrastructures, approach with supporters, club administrations etc. I think my background gives me that tool-set to try to make the performance of clubs more successful in this regard.

ES: Among the IT elements in your background, you focused on several things including data analytics. Do you think that there is scope in this in football and how do you think we fare in Maltese football in this regard?

DF: It is very relevant. One of my objectives, if we had enough budget, would be to have a software that analyses players individually to understand what the strengths of each individual player are and where they can improve. These are technologies that exist, but unfortunately are expensive and perhaps for Malta the scalability is difficult because we are small. However, they are not impossible. I think there is plenty of space in sport for the use of artificial intelligence and technology to improve our level. This includes the level of referees, to understand what happens exactly in the ground. Sometimes video footage is not enough.

ES: However, in many cases, we lack even video footage, including in the women’s game (although not limited to it)…

DF: Yes, true. In fact, one of the pillars of the Women’s National Football Strategy is the element of broadcasting. There needs to be investment to be able to do this, so an option is to reach an agreement with the broadcasting authority or a particular channel for them to capture this footage, which has its own expense. Alternatively, you can invest in Facebook live equipment and you broadcast the match yourself on that platform, however then you go into the implications of those rights. Another option is that clubs invest into their own cameras and stream matches on their own pages.

However, from my end, the strategy that I proposed certainly addresses the fact that we need to invest more in content creation and broadcasting of our product. In the end, there is no point investing in your product but then not showing it to anyone. Many question this, because since the numbers being attracted to the grounds are low, this is simply seen as an extra cost, because the revenue has decreased drastically. However, I rebut this by the answer that if people are not coming to the grounds, then definitely you need to do the extra effort to show them what is happening. Social media opens the opportunity to have a global audience.

ES: The public inquiry related to Jean Paul Sofia put a damning verdict on the Malta Enterprise board which you formed part of, claiming that there was poor scrutiny of the proposal and a lack of transparency in the decision making. As a group you have since combatted the factuality of the claims in the report. Considering all of this, how would you address a voter who is still skeptical about your involvement as Vice President in MFA, should you be elected?

DF: I think the public inquiry is separate to this election in football. Despite this, I want to make it clear that the whole situation is a sensitive one, because a life was lost and I do not take the matter lightly. Considering everything, voters who want to rest their minds can see the detailed press release I published together with the Investment Committee (here & here).

Take On Some Of The Challenges Awaiting In The Coveted Office

In view of some of the challenges which any of the candidates will face if elected as Vice President, below are a list of questions that have been asked to all the interviewed candidates. 

ES: One of the factors mentioned recently has been that the statistics show that the number of players in the women’s game has been increasing. Do you agree with this statement?

DF: The numbers are increasing at a younger age, especially when before you had none in certain areas. There were key performance indicators (KPIs) which were set up, aligned with the stipulations by UEFA and FIFA who have pushed for the increase in numbers of around 15%. We reached this 15% and kept pushing for girls to be included in the sport. There is high participation in schools, these courses are fully booked. However, the challenge is to translate the children taking part in the organized activities in schools into participation within clubs.

There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to change the culture. There are still clubs who do not see inclusion of girls because the culture still does not allow this. Besides, this clubs require additional support, both financially and in an administrative sense to take on the increasing the load.

ES: Fixtures have been a debated issue, with various points from all stakeholders into the issues of fixture congestion in relation to youth players, as well as restrictions due to pitches. What do you think needs to be done to address this aspect moving forward?

DF: There’s plenty of work to be done I think where one considers infrastructure and availability of pitches. We must look at this holistically, in both women’s and men’s football. The pitches which are good and being used right now will also require maintenance and periods where they become unavailable which continues to exacerbate the problem. It is a subject that certainly must be dominant in the next few years.

ES: Being Vice President involves listening to a wide number of issues, but also have the ability to find solutions that cater for all football, not just women’s football. What are elements that make your experience relevant to both the men’s and the women’s game?

DF: I’ve been focused on women’s football for some time, but over the past month I’ve had the opportunity to speak with more clubs. My time in the Executive Board has given me a platform to discuss elements related to men’s football as well. So, you hear discussions and their line of thought. So, I think that exposure gives me enough background to understand where men’s football clubs are, where they want to go and to build a relationship with them that will lead to tangible changes.

ES: What are three things that you think should be on the agenda for football the upcoming years?

DF: I think the main priority must be the relationship and communication with clubs. This is the fundamental aspect which will lead to all of the other elements. I think if you want to bring about change, you must communicate and listen.

ES: There are a group of candidates in the running to become Vice President. What do you think sets you apart as someone that can take football forward as a whole?

DF: I think the elements which one must focus on are humility, communication and the relationship you build, as well as to be true to your word. Those who know me know that I value these things and that I am a person who is responsible. If I promise to do something I will see to it, and if I think something is not possible I will be clear as well. You cannot always make everyone happy, but I think you must be direct. This is why I think that with clear communication everyone knows exactly where they are heading.

The Sporting Fan would like to thank Dana Farrugia for taking the time to be able to bring you this special feature in honour of the upcoming election to take place this Friday, 15^th March.

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