RI league divided into three pools

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)