South East Asia, soccer insanity and Sir Alex.

South East Asia, soccer insanity and Sir Alex.

He's football crazy, he's football mad, football has gone and
robbed him of the sense he ever had.

These lyrics, taken from a popular British song from the
1960s, are an apposite reflection of the Jakartan mindset at the
beginning of the third millennium. Next week sees the start of
the new English Premiership season and viewers the length and
breadth of Indonesia, Southeast Asia and China will reactivate
their shared insanity as they huddle around TV sets in order to
watch grossly overpaid grown men kick leather balls up and down
rectangular fields some 6000 miles away.

Football games have recently been declared the only programs
to be exempt from the nation's current electricity economy drive;
a power saving measure that sees all other shows grind to a halt
as the balls keep rolling. Noam Chomsky, famous lefty theorist
and scourge of the American political establishment, has
described sport as an activity through which simmering social and
political tensions are sublimated. So much energy, he reasons,
that would otherwise be channeled toward political ends and
improving society, is wasted by young men the world over on
something completely meaningless, i.e. the number of times a ball
passes between two posts.

So, is this why soccer broadcasts in Indonesia must continue
at all costs, even when other programs have bitten the dust, to
prevent a revolution? Must RI's incongruously tobacco sponsored
footy shows carry on in order to stop the reform movement coming
back to life and actually changing something this time around?

Conspiracy theories aside, European, and particularly English
soccer, is huge business in Asia. In Indonesia, one can watch
live Premiership games for free on local television, something
you certainly can't do in England these days. It's also a common
sight in Jakarta, if one is out on the streets at such an ungodly
hour, to see guys gathered around TV sets in warungs watching
European Champions' League games at 3 a.m.

And there's worse. I'm currently writing this piece in the
new Manchester United Restaurant and Bar which can be found on
top of the Sarinah building on Jl. Thamrin where the Hard Rock
Cafe used to sit. To my mind, a restaurant and bar dedicated
solely to one English football club, in Jakarta of all places,
does seem faintly ludicrous, even if that team is the richest and
most famous in the world. Mind you, Planet Hollywood also used to
seem rather tastelessly superfluous to requirements to me but
I've got used to the whole plastic-volcano-wanking stupidity of
it all over the years. A Manchester United restaurant though, God
help us all.

Inside, the old Hard Rock layout remains; restaurant on the
left, bar on the right. However, instead of lame top 40 covers
bands, one can savor the delights of looped Ruud Van Nistelroy
goals whilst eating one's Man. U. Steak & Ale Pie (Rp. 68,000++).
It's all rather off-putting for an Arsenal supporter like me.
They do love their MU in Indonesia and Singapore though; there
can be little argument about that.

The waiters and waitresses all wear Man. U. shirts, naturally,
and you even get to flash a red card in the air in order to
attract their attention, although this didn't seem to work very
well in practice. The menu is full of wholesome steaks (not so
cheap at Rp 98,000 - Rp 150,000) plus plenty of Asian and pasta
dishes. There's a good value happy hour between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.
every day during which you can drink a free flow of draught beer
for only Rp 60,000. After that your nose should be as red as Sir
Alex Ferguson's. The menu also features several "Fun Football
Facts" for the hard of thinking such as, "In football, a hat-
trick occurs when a player scores three goals in a single game."
Well I never.

The Manchester United Bar and Restaurant was almost completely
empty when I dined there at dinnertime on a Tuesday. The team had
better win something soon if the restaurant wants to shift those
Man. U Combo BBQ Ribs. Still, the food was of a high-quality and
I found the restaurant, as the Hard Rock was before it, a mellow
enough place in which to spend 90 minutes (plus three-minutes of
stoppage time in the toilet). I'm still waiting for the Arsenal
Wine Bar and Bistro to materialize though.

Simon Pitchforth