Nine hundred and five people were inside the Estadi de la FAF in Encamp on Thursday evening, and for about twenty minutes most of them thought Andorra were going to win a football match. They were wrong, but not by much. Malta needed until the 81st minute to break them, and the man who did it was the one who had set up the equaliser 45 minutes earlier.
Teddy Teuma scored the goal that finished it. Irvin Cardona laid it off to him, the same Cardona whose first-half header Teuma had provided, and Malta walked out of League D's opening round with three points that the xG numbers say they should have collected an hour before they actually did.
Andorra led, and then stopped
Guillaume Lopez put the hosts in front on 17 minutes. That was the high point. Andorra, ranked 172nd in the world, managed 41 per cent of the ball and finished the night with an expected-goals figure of 0.75 against Malta's 3.23, which is the statistical way of saying they had one good moment and spent the rest of the evening defending their box.
The equaliser came on 36 minutes and it came from the away side's best two players combining. Teuma found Cardona, Cardona finished, and the half ended level. Andorra did not have another spell in the game after that.
Malta kept knocking
Thirteen shots each tells you almost nothing here. Malta had five big chances to Andorra's three and 25 touches in the opposition penalty area, and the pattern of the second half was a team pressing a door that would not open. Zach Muscat came on at the break. Kyrian Ewurum arrived on 75 minutes. Substitutions in a game like this are usually a sign of impatience rather than a plan, and Malta were visibly running out of ideas before Teuma settled it.
When the goal arrived it was worked rather than gifted. Cardona again, Teuma again, and the Sliema Wanderers midfielder finished the move he had started in the first half. He was taken off eight minutes later for Jake Grech with the job done.
What it means for League D
Malta have not had many nights like this. They are 161st in the FIFA rankings, eleven places above the team they just beat, and an away win in a Nations League group is not something the island collects often. Three points from round one puts them top of the group on goal difference before anybody else has kicked a ball in it.
Andorra's problem is more familiar. They defended for an hour and a quarter and lost anyway, which is roughly how most of their campaigns go. Dutch referee Jeroen Kooij booked six players across the ninety minutes, four of them Andorran, and the tempers in the closing stages told their own story about a side that knew it had let something slip.
Match facts: Andorra 1-2 Malta, UEFA Nations League League D, Estadi de la FAF, Encamp, Thursday 24 September 2026, 17:00 BST. Goals: Guillaume Lopez 17 (Andorra); Irvin Cardona 36 (Teuma), Teddy Teuma 81 (Cardona) for Malta. Referee: Jeroen Kooij (Netherlands). Attendance: 905 in a 5,600-capacity ground. Expected goals: Andorra 0.75, Malta 3.23. Possession: Andorra 41%, Malta 59%.
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