W

hat do you do after your soccer team loses 10-0 in a pre-World Cup match? Boycott the media because they presented you in a bad light. At least that’s what the Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) did.

The humiliating defeat to Bahrain last week was a culminating point in a series of mismanagement in the country’s beloved sport.

The PSSI fired coach Alfred Riedl after his success in making the national team the runner-up in the 2010 AFF Suzuki Cup. It sacked four members of the executive committee and there is still confusion in the dualism of the Indonesian Premier League, even after FIFA had to step in through a “normalization committee” to elect a new PSSI chief because the previous one was convicted of corruption.

Johar Arifin, the PSSI chief, was quick to point out that Bahrain and the referee for the match was to be blamed for the size of the loss. FIFA will conduct an investigation, considering that the 10-point win could have been too convenient for Bahrain, who might have needed it to advance to the next round.

However, this does not mean that the PSSI is free from scrutiny for not using some of Indonesia’s best players in the match, even though they had no chance of advancing themselves.

In an interview, Arifin responded that the reason of why senior players were not on the field was because “they are all mafia because they have been contaminated by the ways and behaviors of the old PSSI.”

Despite their talents, many shining players were unable to wear the Garuda emblem on their chests because they did not follow the rules of the “new PSSI” and they did not play in the official PSSI league.

Fika Fawzia
Singapore