RI league divided into three pools
JAKARTA (JP): The All-Indonesia Soccer Association decided at a meeting Thursday to split the Indonesia League into three groups -- Group West, Group Central and Group East -- with 11 teams competing in each group.
Until recently, the league has been geographically split into two regional divisions, West and East.
Group West includes teams from both western and eastern Indonesian provinces.
Group Central is not purely regional, either. It includes teams from the west (such as PSMS Medan), central (such as PSIS Semarang) and eastern Indonesian provinces (such as Mitra Surabaya and Barito Putra).
Group East, however, consists entirely of teams from the eastern Indonesian provinces.
The association's secretary-general, Nugraha Besoes, said the grouping was meant to disperse teams coming from the same cities so that no group features two teams from the same city as was the case in the league's previous format.
Surabaya is a case in point. The capital city of East Java has "three" teams in different groups, Persebaya Surabaya in Group West, Mitra Surabaya in Group Central and Assyabaab Salim Grup in Group East.
Assyabaab is actually a team from Sidoarjo, a town 24km south of Surabaya. But it can be considered as a Surabaya team because it has Surabaya's Gelora 10 November stadium as its home ground.
"Through this system the quality of the competition will hopefully increase," Besoes was quoted by Media Indonesia as saying yesterday.
Amri Lubis, deputy manager of Mastrans Bandung Raya, which is in Group West with Persebaya Surabaya, questioned the rationale behind the grouping. "On what grounds is the grouping based? Certainly not on geography; nor on seeding. This is ridiculous," he was quoted as saying by Jawa Pos.
Based on the new groupings, the top four in each group will advance to the league's second round. They will then be divided into two groups, with the top two of each going through to the semifinals.
The meeting also decided to postpone the league's kick-off from Nov. 3 to Nov. 17 after league winner Mastrans Bandung Raya and runner-up PSM Ujungpandang, which have to share their top players with the Asia Cup-bound national team, raised objections to the early schedule. (arf)