Indonesian soccer body to start league on March 22

JAKARTA (JP): The All Indonesian Soccer Federation meeting decided on Thursday to delay the fourth Indonesian soccer league, which originally started on Feb. 8, to March 22.

The meeting -- which was attended by the State Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Hayono Isman, the federation chairman Azwar Anas, the federation branches chairmen and owners of the clubs -- also allowed all clubs to find their own sponsors for the league.

The decisions were taken as the best solutions to continue the league during the economic turmoil in the country.

Azwar, who is also Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare, said that the government also urged the federation not to stage the league, which can cause riots, during the People's Consultative Assembly's meeting from March 1 to March 11.

Hayono supported the call saying: "The federation and clubs have more time to solve their problems on finding new sponsors."

The meeting's results also said that promoter PT Cipta Citra had no longer contract with the federation to stage the league.

For this year's competition, each club can find its own sponsors.

"But the federation still has the TV rights," the federation's spokesman Tondo Widodo said.

Most of the meeting participants agreed to continue the competition despite the economic turmoil.

Some clubs, including Balikpapan-based Persiba in East Kalimantan and Manado-based Persema in North Sulawesi, suggested the federation to only stage one season of the two-season competition.

But the meeting resulted to go on with the full competition.

The federation's secretary-general, Nugraha Besoes, said clubs had to be able to finance themselves during the competition.

"Otherwise, they won't survive until the final stages," he said.

The final stages, which will be participated by the best 12 clubs at the Senayan main stadium, will not use the round-robin system anymore but the knock-out system due to the limited time.

The league director, Iswadi Idris, told Antara that with the new system, the competition would likely finish in July.

"Without the new system, we predict the competition will finish by the end of August. We know that early September, we'll stage the second ASEAN Tiger Cup and our national players must perform at the championship," he said.

In August, the Winners Cup and the Asian Champion competitions will start and the federation will have to send the teams to compete at both tournaments.

The Bandung-based Persib manager, Dwi Kurnianto, and the Surabaya-based Persebaya manager, Karwoto, expressed their optimism that their clubs would survive during the league although they would not receive Rp 100 million (US$10,000) subsidy from the main sponsor.

On the other hand, the Denpasar-based Gelora Dewata manager, Vigit Waluyo, was pessimistic on finding new sponsors during the economic collapse.

"It depends on the club owner now to finance the club," he said, adding that his club would still compete at the competition as long as it has the money. (yan)