PSSI to dissolve Primavera team
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's junior soccer team, the country's dream team upon which all hopes and best wishes have been piled, must now stop dreaming.
The All-Indonesia Football Association (PSSI) has decided to dissolve the team, known as PSSI Primavera. The team earned its Italian name due to their stints in Italy with soccer giant Sampdoria and their participation in Italy's youth soccer competition, Primavera, Italian for spring.
"The decision will take effect as of Aug. 29," Soeparjo Pontjowinoto, the association's secretary-general, told reporters on Thursday.
He did not elaborate why, but apparently it was due to the team's 1-0 loss to South Korea in the Olympic Asia Oceania Zone qualifying round match on Tuesday, which blew away the long- awaited chance of earning a berth in the Olympic Games in Atlanta next year.
Those who were not with the team from the start, but later included and sent to Italy, will be returned to their clubs of origin without transfer fees, Soeparjo said.
Those who have been with the team from the beginning, but have no contract with any European club, can join the Indonesian League's bottom-placed clubs, provided the clubs compensate for their training fees, he added.
The amount of the compensation will be determined in a meeting on Sept. 1. "I think there are clubs which will pay if the amount is, say, only Rp 10 million (US$4,416)," Soeparjo said. He added that the association will use the money to send its booters abroad for either training or competition.
Contracts
As for seven players who have secured contracts with some Swiss clubs, they can continue playing for their new clubs, on the condition that they must come home to defend PSSI if they are needed, Soeparjo said.
The association's decision to dissolve the team will put an end to the endless debates as to whether or not the PSSI Primavera training project in Italy, on which billions of rupiah have been spent, should be continued.
Soeparjo implied that he disagreed with the project. Monitoring players' development from the age of 15 will be a better way of training, he said. He also disagreed with Nirwan Bakrie's opinion, who said that the project was necessary because junior league competition in Indonesia does not work well and so, the need to include them in Italy's junior competitions. Nirwan Bakrie is the head of the PSSI Primavera project.
Soeparjo said that improving junior competitions would pay more. The top players, who emerge from the competitions, can be sent abroad for further training, he added. But most importantly, junior competitions must work first. This is crucial to the development of national soccer, he asserted.
PSSI Primavera players will take on Hong Kong in their last pre-Olympic qualifying round match in Hong Kong tomorrow. But whatever the result, it seems that for them, spring has turned to autumn, if not winter (arf).