What Indonesian football can learn from its stadium disaster

If Indonesia wants to be a major player on the football’s world stage, it first needs to comprehensively address the 2022 tragedy in which 135 fans died.

As we approach the two year anniversary of Indonesian football’s darkest day, the country’s football administrators are still grappling with how best to bring in sustainable reforms that safeguard the sport’s future.

On October 1 2022, 135 people died during a League 1 match between Arema FC and Persebaya in the Kanjuruhan tragedy, suffocating in a crowd crush brought on by violence between two rival groups of supporters.

When violence erupts at a football game, the finger gets pointed solely at the fans. In reality, the mistakes start well before the first supporter jumps the barrier or throws a punch.

It begins with match organising committees, who sell more tickets than they have stadium capacity. It gets made worse by security, who sometimes provoke more than they defuse tensions. It falls at the feet of police, who too readily deploy tear gas, and on competition operators who hold matches without organising proper security measures.

But that fell on deaf ears at the Indonesian Football Association, also known as PSSI. After the Kanjuruhan tragedy, the Indonesian government formed an independent investigative committee. It found lots of shortcomings: there was no pre-game safety briefing in the stadium, no signage to help patrons in the event of an emergency. Security gates designed to help in the event of evacuation were never even prepared.

The Indonesian government cannot directly intervene in the administration of the country’s football, as it would be considered a violation of the sport’s sovereignty by FIFA, football’s world governing body. That means the best the committee can do is make recommendations and hope the PSSI takes it on board.

What has to change?

The best way to prevent another tragedy in Indonesia’s League 1 is to prioritise safety over profit when it comes to scheduling matches.

For instance, the Kanjuruhan match was held at night, allegedly to help maximise television ratings — even though matches at night pose a greater security risk and the clubs’ fans had a deep pre-existing rivalry.

To prevent fan violence, football in Indonesia needs to be modernised. That starts with holding football clubs to a higher standard.

If a club is unable to improve its governance, including managing the behaviour of its fans, administrators should be prepared to sanction them — financial penalties, stadium bans and relegation are all punishments that could be used if the league is willing to make safety the top priority.

Likewise, if PSSI cannot improve its governance, its football competition should be evaluated. Although it wound up not bidding for the 2034 FIFA World Cup, it seemed close to happening — a sign that the country wants to be taken seriously on the world stage of football.

For this to become a reality, Indonesia needs to become a safe place to play and watch football.

What is being done?

To its credit, the PSSI has begun a slew of reforms to improve fan behaviour.

Supporters of away teams are banned from attending matches during the domestic tournament, the 2024 President’s Cup. Since the Kanjuruhan tragedy, FIFA has mandated Indonesia undergo a two-year “transformation period” to improve the safety of its football, otherwise it faces formal sanctions from the sport’s governing body.

Along with the stopgap measure of away fan bans, FIFA has also prompted the PSSI to bring in a registration system to help identify and hold accountable unruly fans who are disruptive and violent at games.

This measure borrows from England’s Football Association (FA), which faced a similar crisis in 1989. Following a notorious period of violent football hooliganism, which reached its nadir with the death of 97 Liverpool supporters in the 1989 Hillsborough stadium tragedy, the FA made fundamental changes to football in England.

Security at stadiums improved, new regulations governing football were drafted and the FA re-thought its relationship with supporters. There has been a transition away from a heavy police presence at football stadiums and move towards stewards, specially trained staff who balance security responsibilities with helping patrons.

Other measures Indonesia could borrow from England include requiring all stadiums to use single seats, meaning no standing areas, which is much safer to quell unruly fans. The FA also saw to it that high guardrails between stands and the field were removed, as it was understood to trigger poorer behaviour from fans.

Hooliganism has not completely disappeared from football in England, but the scale of violence against football fans has decreased significantly compared to the 1980s.

The importance of regulations and infrastructure

After Hillsborough, English authorities moved to change every facet of the fan experience.

To some, the rules have dulled some of the vigour and enthusiasm of crowds. But the FA saw it as a necessary measure to save lives and ensure Hillsborough was never repeated.

Football violence in England is far from fully resolved. Police arrested 49 people over violent clashes at the UEFA Euro 2020 final in London, and fights still happen at English Premier League fixtures.

But Indonesian football has a lot to learn from its international peers, and it could start by taking on some of the lessons from the Kanjuruhan tragedy to ensure a disaster on such a scale never happens again.

Fajar Junaedi is a lecturer at the Department of Communication Science, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta and an activist at the Muhammadiyah Center for Sports Development.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.