What do Mustafic Fahrudin, Shahril Ishak and Baihakki Khaizan have in common? Other than they lifted the Suzuki Cup together for Singapore last December, all of them had played in the Indonesian Super League (ISL) during their career. Recently, Junpiter Futbol visited the football crazy country and experienced the fanatic support from the football supporters which the trios couldn’t seems to stop talking about whenever they were asked about Indonesian football!
The infamous traffic condition in Jakarta took us near 4 hours of car ride from Jakarta to Bandung. With the assistance of ISL Management, we were treated to an extremely exciting game where Persib Bandung hosted Mitra Kukar at the full 40,000 capacity Si Jalak Harupat Stadium.
In fact, many mini vans decorated with Persib’s banners which we saw along the way, were already spreading the excitement to us even way before we arrived at the destination. Persib’s supporters waving the flag passionately while sitting on top of the mini vans and their singing could be heard in easily 5 cars’ length distance! As we arrived at the huge Si Jalak Harupat Stadium, we were greeted with stores surrounding the entire stadium’s perimeter selling Persib Bandung’s merchandises and supporters’ tops. It seems like we had entered into a carnival! Everyone outside the stadium was in Blue, singing and having fun!
Si Jalak Harupat Stadium looked exactly like one of those run-down stadiums but the atmosphere for the game was phenomenon! By the pitch side, I seem to be able to understand how it felt to be a player playing in a full capacity stadium at that moment. Every few passes stringed, excellent tackles executed, shots at goal well saved by the keeper, all resulted into a huge eruption of cheers at the stadium. When game ended, flares were lighted, fireworks were released and the stadium would be raining water bottles! We were nearly escorted off by the local riot-police under their shields but it’s after all another unique “carnival” taking place in the stadium where the fans would rushed down onto the pitch to catch hold of their favorite players for a photograph.
Although it was a tight schedule to rush from Jakarta to Bandung and back to Jakarta all within a day, the experience which we had gained at Si Jalak Harupat Stadium was worth the effort. Put aside the football game, the extensiveness of the security and ushers deployment, the logistic arrangement for media to get into the stadium and many more other resources required to ensure the game runs smoothly, our visions have been enlarged greatly. A very big thank you for Dynamique Konzepts, Organizer for Singapore International Youth Tournament, SingaCup 2013 for making this trip possible.
More photos of Si Jalak Harupat Stadium, click here.
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