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Date of
birth: February 5, 1950
Nationality: Maltese
Position: midfielder
Debut: April 4, 1965
Last match: April 16, 1983
Appearances for Club: 137
Goals for Club: 41
Loreto Galea is one of
the greatest players ever to grace a football pitch in
Gozo. He was just past his sixteenth birthday when he
had already won the minor league title, the second
division title and the Independence Cup with the Club
all in one season. |
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He played a starring role making his presence
felt in all three competitions with several decisive goals. He
went on to win five first division titles and fifteen other
major honours with the Club. He was the first Ghajnsielem player
to win the G.F.A. Footballer of the Year award, this at the age
of 20. With 41 goals to his credit he is not only in the top
five of the Club's all-time scoring list, but he is by far the
highest scoring midfielder in Club history. He was Club captain
during the latter three years of its five year reign on top of
Gozitan football. The reach of his accomplishments extends
beyond the shores of Gozo. Indeed, he was an indispensable
performer also in the Hamrun Spartans sides of the early
seventies.
Loreto Galea was the midfield maestro who
conducted one symphony after the other in the glorious years in
which many teams tried but none succeeded in upstaging the
Blacks in the sport of football in Gozo. With the ball at his
feet Loreto dictated the tempo, switched play, applied the
pressure at the opponent's stress points. He managed to impose
his will on his foe without being rushed or in a rush in the
process. Without the ball he marshaled his troops, reprimanding
some, encouraging others. His leadership was never questioned,
least of all by the targets of his ire. He practiced perfection
and demanded perfection. His skills were so vast that it is
difficult to conjure another player before and after that was
such a complete footballer. He had excellent positional sense,
he was a tenacious tackler, his ball control was smooth, he was
clever dribbling the ball, his passing was pinpoint, his
shooting was a blend of power and accuracy and he was deadly in
the air. He applied these skills to the immediate needs of the
team: supplier of a through pass one moment, ruthless finisher
the next, and when the situation required it, he was the first
player back bailing the team out of a defensive jam.
 The
extra-sensory understanding that he developed with Vincent
Cutajar, on many an occasion, made all the difference for the
Blacks. The effortless one-twos woven by this duo through the
opposition form the tapestry on top of which all the Club's
trophies from the golden era can be placed.
Gozitan football lost this player to emigration at the end of
the 1974/75 season. Although Loreto made a handful of other
appearances for the Club after that season on occasional visits
to Malta, it is safe to say that his career in effect spanned
ten glittering years. It is astonishing that this wonderful
player's accomplishments all took place before his twenty-sixth
birthday, well short of his natural prime. The Club has not seen
the likes of Loreto Galea ever since he took off his number ten
shirt and left it in the dressing room for others to wear. It is
perhaps no coincidence that Ghajnsielem, in the years that
followed, did not approach the quality of football played and
the type of success enjoyed during Loreto's career with the
Club.
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