In Indonesia, soccer is everywhere: on newsstands, a city’s soundscape, fashion boutiques, and in the graffiti and murals of city walls. While in recent years violence has erupted between fans and corruption scandals have rocked the domestic league, it remains arguably the most intensely fought-over cultural product in contemporary Indonesia.
Andy Fuller has explored fandom in the two cities of Solo and Yogyakarta, two long-established cultural rivals both claiming to be heirs to Javanese high culture. An ex-player interviewed for the study reminisced over the ‘good old days’ and lamented the decrepit state of Indonesian soccer today, partly due to allegations of corruption involving his old team PSS Sleman, who were accused of match-fixing when their game against PSIS Semarang saw five own goals scored after the 87th minute. The domestic league has also been plagued by violence that saw the death of Muhammad Ikhwanuddin, a PSCS Cilacap supporter, at the hands of PSS Sleman supporters in October 2014.
The rise of PSS Sleman and its supporter groups, Andy states, is a result of the ‘era of decentralization’ that led to a greater sense of identification with one’s team. Indonesian football is effectively an intersection of mainstream politics, identity politics, and negotiations of hetero-normative masculinity, and also the playing field for a diverse range of religious and youth gangs.
...all this and more in the 27th episode of the Football and Society podcast.
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Each week, Ash, Chris and Norman explore societal issues through the lens of the beautiful game.
From the ethics of gambling sponsorship to what a stadium move means for fans, we’ll be covering it all each week with expert guests from the worlds of sports journalism and sociology.