Maltese football system

The Maltese football leagues system of association football is made up of a set of leagues organised and controlled by the Malta Football Association. Malta has had a top level football division since 1909, it continues on today with the current system.

Currently the system includes 4 tiers. All of the leagues are currently sponsored by Bank of Valletta:

The Maltese Premier League is probably most criticised for a format that is similar to that of the Scottish Premier League, where the league is split up into two phases, a first one with two rounds (home and away – formally, since the league is played within 3 or 4 stadiums only), and the second phase accommodates a split of the 12 teams into a Championship Pool (top 6 teams) and the Relegation Pool (bottom 6 teams). Also, a particular characteristic of the Maltese Premier League is that once the split takes place, the points gathered in the previous two rounds, are halved, supposedly to create more competition.

In parallel to these leagues run a number of Knock Out competitions, the most prominent one being the FA Trophy.

On January 13, 2011, the Malta Football Association decided to restructure the format of the leagues as from season 2011–12.

Thus the system in force from season 2011–12 came to read:

Once again, the Malta Football Association decided to restructure the format of the leagues. As from season 2017/18, the Maltese Premier League will have 14 clubs competing at the top level of Maltese football. For the first time in decades, the Maltese Premier League will have 2 rounds, each team playing the other twice, and will not split the points in half at any stage.

Thus in season 2017/18, the format will be as follows:

The main noticeable change in format is the introduction of a promotion-relegation play-off that will take place across all the leagues in Malta. The 12th place team in each league will play a one match decider at a neutral ground against the team that finishes in 3rd place of the lower league. The winner of the decider will take its place in the higher league in the following season.

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Wikipedia