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Football

01st Jun 2016

WATCH: David Alaba’s bizarre own goal arguably more embarrassing for Malta

Comedy of errors

Ben Kiely

An own goal for the ages from David Alaba.

Austria took on Malta on Tuesday night in their penultimate warm-up game before Euro 2016.

The Group F side were in cruise control against the European minnows, leading 2-0 with minutes left on the clock. However, they failed to keep a clean sheet thanks to an absolutely ridiculous error from one of their most reliable men, David Alaba.

Austria got a little too lackadaisical passing around the back towards the end of the game. The ball found its way to Alaba who, under heavy pressure from the Maltese attack was looking to pass it back to the goalkeeper as soon as possible so that it could be booted out of danger.

The only issue is that Ramazan Özcan, presumably fearful of Alaba hitting the ball towards his own goal had strayed to the side of the posts looking to receive the pass. If Alaba had looked up, he would have realised his number one was out of position and adjusted his pass accordingly.

Unfortunately, he did not.

As embarrassing an error as it was for Alaba and Austria, it produced an even more embarrassing statistic which really sums up the standard of the Maltese national team.

So far in 2016, Malta have played three matches, all of which were friendlies. They drew 0-0 with Moldova in March and were trounced 6-0 by Czech Republic last week.

This means that technically speaking, Alaba is their top scorer for the year so far.

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