The joint committee, which was established by international football governing body FIFA and Asian Football Confederation, agreed in a meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to form a new top league in the country as soon as 2014.
The committee, which includes members of Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) and rival body Indonesian Football Savior Committee (KPSI), said that the two competing leagues — the Indonesian Premier League and the breakaway Indonesian Super League — can continue their plans for the new season until that time. Both leagues finished their seasons in June.
“We won’t be able to merge the two leagues in a short period of time, so we agreed to let IPL and ISL go ahead with their own schedules and plans until 2014,” Hinca Panjaitan, a committee member from the KPSI, said on Saturday. “Actually we proposed to establish a new league in 2015, but the AFC asked us to speed up the process and gave a 2014 deadline.”
Hinca said the committee has yet to discuss details of how the new league would be established.
A source inside the committee, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told the Jakarta Globe that the proposed name of the new top flight league was Liga Merah Putih (Red White League) and that the top 10 teams from the IPL and the ISL at the end of the 2012/2013 season would likely qualify for the league.
Indonesian football has been in turmoil in the past two years as open struggles for power have divided the country’s favorite sport.
FIFA and the AFC had expressed concern over how the ISL and the KPSI were affecting the sport. The AFC then formed a task force, led by AFC Vice President Prince Abdullah Ibni Sultan Ahmad Shah of Malaysia, in March to mediate talks between the PSSI and the KPSI.
The KPSI had also established what it called “the true national team,” which is coached by Alfred Riedl and has been training in Malang since August.
The ISL clubs have been reluctant to release their players to national teams, but they let them go to the KPSI’s team training camp.
Because of that, Merah Putih coach Nil Maizar currently has only IPL clubs’ players in his squad list.
Both the PSSI and the KPSI admitted that they also discussed the fate of the national team during the meeting, but they have differing opinions on that.
Todung Mulya Lubis, a PSSI representative and also the committee’s chairman, said that the PSSI, which is still recognized by FIFA, has the authority to manage the national team.
“PSSI will still run the national team and we at the committee agreed all clubs, whether from IPL or ISL, have to release players for national team duty,” Todung said. “The joint committee’s duty is only to help PSSI and the national team to coach developing the team.”
However, the KPSI believed otherwise, as noted by Joko Driyono, the ISL chief executive and also member of the committee. “We agreed to let the committee run the national team, while PSSI will help the committee with players’ administrative matters.”
The committee will have to settle their differences quickly because starting in November, the national team will play in the Asean Football Federation Suzuki Cup.
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