Coach Schumm drops five from U-20 team
Coach Schumm drops five from U-20 team
Musthofid, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Bernhard Schumm, coach of the Indonesian Under-20 soccer team,
recently dropped five players from his squad because they had
apparently tried to falsify their ages by providing inaccurate
birth certificates.
The team is currently preparing for the ASEAN Cup and the
Asian Cup next year.
The five include Felik, Hendra D., Mulyadinata, Dedi Suparman
(goalkeeper) and Sampur. The first four are from Persija and the
last from the Indosemen soccer club.
Their expulsion seemed to be a result of "non-technical"
problems. "They had bad birth data," Schumm told reporters after
a training session here on Wednesday.
Players taking part in the junior events should not exceed 20
years of age when the competition takes place between Jan. 21 to
Feb. 2 for ASEAN Championship and between Oct. 15 and 31 for the
Asian Championship finals.
Birth certificate falsification carries heavy penalties
ranging from disqualification and a ban from international
tournaments against a national team.
The German coach, who is taking up his second coaching job for
the national soccer team after a brief spell in 1999, now has 25
players, who will be shortlisted to 20 before heading for the
championship.
"We are looking for 20 players including two goalkeepers. But
this (the cut) won't be done in the immediate future. Wait a
little bit. Give them time to show their skills," Schumm said.
The U-20 ASEAN Championship preliminary round matches will be
played in two cities, each hosting five teams.
Bangkok will be the venue for Group A which consists of
Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia, while Phnom
Penh will be the site of the Group B matches comprising Cambodia,
Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos and Brunei.
The top two teams will qualify for the semifinals in Bangkok,
which will also host the final.
In the Asian Championship, Indonesia joins Hong Kong, Thailand
and the Philippines in Group Nine. The finals will be held in
Qatar.
Schumm's recruits have gone through a selection which was
attended by 56 players taken from the U-18 Bogasari League.
Twenty-six players failed to survive the first cut and five
more were let go in the second phase.
Schumm said that he was adopting a new system with three
strikers and one attacking midfielder, alternating between a 3-5-
2 formation and a 3-4-3.
He mentioned Basuki, Supardi and Febri Setiadi as the strong
candidates to be the strikers.
"We'll see whether or not it works. It's very difficult. But
why shouldn't we try. We have many good strikers," the German
said, adding that a number of the world's major powers like
France and Holland also use such a system.
"We want to see a playing style with high pressure. For the
next few days, our main focus will be to find a starting eleven
at this early stage," he said.