Devis Mangia: Two Malta footballers come forward to MFA over sexual harassment

Two football players from the Maltese national team have come forward alleging unwanted sexual advances by suspended coach Devis Mangia.

The case is being heard by the Malta Football Association’s executive committee, which has suspended the Italian coach, 47, on Tuesday.

Net News reported that mobile phone recordings of the alleged sexual misconduct will be presented to the MFA committee hearing the matter.

Mangia yesterday did not reply to MaltaToday’s request for comment, and whether the allegations were motivated by his decisions not to field certain players that could have refused his advances.

Malta’s last match was against Israel on Tuesday, a friendly match played on the day Mangia was suspended by the MFA, and against Estonia where it lost 2-1 to the home side in the UEFA Nations League.

“Mangia has been relieved temporarily of his duties as Head Coach of the National Teams following a report it received about alleged breach of its policies. Mangia has given his full availability for the facts of the matter to be established. The Association will not comment any further until the next steps are discussed within the respective decision-making bodies in an open and transparent manner,” the MFA said on Tuesday.

In his last two seasons in charge of Universitatea Craiova, Mangia led the team to win the Romanian Cup, and also managed to take it to the third round of the Europa League, playing against top-tier teams A.C. Milan and Redbull Leipzig. 

Mangia, who married in 2019, was already accused of entertaining intimate relations with footballers when he coached University of Craiova in Romania. The accusations were made by another former coach, Victor Pițurcă, who said Mangia had made advances to footballer Răzvan Popa when he coached the team between 2017 and 2019. 

Club owner Mihai Rotaru had stated that Mangia was not fired, but that he had agreed to leave following discussions. “We really care about Devis, he was part of our family,” Rotaru stated at the time. 

But similar accounts abound from yet another surprise departure by Mangia in 2016, from Ascoli, when the coach claimed he had to leave the club due to health problems. Mangia was however implicated in an incident that took place at a Novara hotel in May 2016 when he and another football player were reported to have left the football team’s retreat for hours on end.