Indonesian Football Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Jakarta. It is now official. FIFA has followed up on its threat to suspend the Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) and with one single letter has finally acted after years of neglect.
Where the untold cases of unpaid salaries, the tragic tales of players dying and even a rebel league set up by a rebel association failed to force the world's governing football body to act, finally a little known body called BOPI (Indonesian Professional Sports Council) has prompted the ultimate sanction.
The government has responded in the way it always does when it feels the nation’s sovereignty is being threatened; it pulls up the drawbridge and pretends it is not really important.
On the global radar, Indonesian football isn’t important. It has become a byword for a tragi-comedy with a cast of dozens able to come up with ever more outlandish scripts that have the whole world saying ‘yeah, but it is Indonesia,’ where farce is expected and farce is delivered.
The fans aren’t happy of course. In recent days supporters or Persipura Jayapura and Persib Bandung have taken to the streets to protest the government's interference in the game. Persipura fans have bigger grievances than most. FIFA’s suspension deprives them of the chance of improving on last season’s semifinal appearance in the AFC Cup. This, coupled with an administrative cock up over Pahang’s foreign players that saw them refused entry to Indonesia had ended Persipura's hopes.
Dreams of reaching the World Cup also went out the window with the suspension as the national team was dumped from the Asian qualifying rounds, forever to be marked in the history books and Wikipedia with an asterix and the brutal annotation ‘Indonesia were disqualified.'
With football in limbo land a few savvy players are scouting around for options with Greg Nwokolo, a naturalized Indonesian international, reportedly on the radar of Thai Premier League side BEC Tero. Most though will just stick around and hope for the best, remarkably optimistic given football officials talent for decision making in recent years.
The government, along with its transition team made up of politicians, website owners and celebrities, thinks a new league could be up and running after the fasting month ends in July but many clubs have dissolved their teams and sent their players home. Given the animosity between the two sides, it is doubtful that many clubs would join a government sponsored league while a FIFA ban is in effect.
There are those of course who hope the ban can lead to reconciliation and a top to bottom overhaul in football, where all stakeholders, with the possible exception of the PSSI, accept the PSSI is in dire need of reform. But previous attempts at cleaning up the game have failed. The rebel Premier League of 2011 being one such attempt that promised to change the game but ended up just as badly run as the league it attempted to replace.
Football is stuck between a rock and a hard place, that is for sure, and there seems to be no savior with the credibility to unite the warring factions and brink about a wholesale, meaningful change.
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