Alright, I promise you that this is going to be my last football talk of the year. I know, the euphoria is gone already after the referee blow the whistle and Indonesia beat Malaysia 2 to 1 but in contradictory situation, that wasn't good enough for us to bring to trophy home. In aggregate, we lost 2 to 4 after in the first leg they beat us 3-0. What a heart breaking night for all of the players who fight so bad during the 90 minutes game! After six wins and one dramatic loss, we only finished as a runner up. But, as captain Bambang Pamungkas said, that's football.
So, what went wrong? Mm, I don't even know where to start. Okay, let me first talk about the different between the battle for your country and the battle for your club. Here's the thing, I've been watching football since I was a little girl back then for the Mexican World Cup 1986 when Maradona with his hand of God brought Argentina as a world champion. And believe it or not, even though I was just a kid who you'd probably never even bother asked for opinion, but I did pay my attention and done some observation here and there during the competition. And that was actually helped me a little in understanding the emotion behind every game. When you play for your country, it is more like you are going to a war to safe the dignity of your nation. It's so much more attachments in there. You will find yourself a little over emotional in this matter. While playing for your club is more like an obligation to them as they are paying you to play so. There was no different with everyone else doing their daily job to make life, do you know what am saying? It's more like a job rather than a prestige. In the other hand, playing for your country is a prestigious thing. That is why, if you read my last blog about football, I mention about how we need our own leader in the field and that is why I insisted Riedl to put BP for the first 45 minutes of the game. Oh no, I wouldn't try to say that Gonzalez wasn't good enough, but, in an important game like the one tonight, the skills and capabilities were suddenly became a secondary factor but the pride of fighting for the country was a primary one. Don't get me wrong, I knew that all of our naturalization players said that they considered Indonesia as their country now, but still, it was never the same. Ever. Let's not close our eyes to the fact that most of foreign footballers who played in our country were from poor countries which, for some reasons, great in football. So if they stayed in their countries and became a footballer there, first of all they might ended up jobless as the competitors over there are way better and more than in here. Second of all, if they stayed in their countries and signed up for their local clubs they won't get paid as good as they are here, come on..Uruguay? Seriously? Is there even any club or league in that country? Never heard of it! I know for sure at this point I have to be careful whenever I go out at night, as someone might put a hit list on me because of what I said here, but think about it first. I mean, open your eyes widely. Do you, in your deepest heart, believe that someone who just lived in a country for the past five years and happens to marriage one of the local chicks, would have the same feeling and love to that country with someone who was born and raised in that country where their parents, their grandparents and great-great grandparents before them also raised and born? I don't think so. Plus, not to mention the effect of those Garuda logo on their t-shirts that needs a pure blood to even feel it.
Alrighty, I will be gentle here, I know that one of our naturalization players has half Indonesian blood and his father was once a great footballer in this country, so I think am gonna let him getaway here. Am not going to attack him as he is kind of cute himself, ha! And don't get me wrong, by saying all of those words above, I never meant to attack anyone in particular, oh..apart from Alfred Riedl, maybe. But my point is, when you play for your country you need a leader who has all of those emotional attachments to push you to the max. That is why we need a cool dude like Bambang in this situation. True that we do have a good captain, Firman Utina, but he was just not that ready yet. It proved by his failure to executed the penalty on 17th minute which could be a turning point for our team. I knew that in his defense, Utina said that he didn't have any pressure when took that penalty, it was pure his honest decision to do so and Malaysian goalkeeper happened to read his move and that was so common in football. Well said, Utina..but who do you try to fool? I mean, I played football with my sister and my cousins when we were kids and even back then I felt a tension and pressure whenever we played. And we didn't even play for anything, just for the sake of paying it. The fact that as humans, we tend to compete with others. Our nature makes us want to be the best amongst our kind and that was so normal. So Utina, knock it off, dude!
So, what went wrong again? Everything! I bet it would've been a different story if Riedl put BP instead of Gonzalez on first half. He would've scored the penalty which built the team confidence and we would've finished the first half with 3-0 and come back for the second half with Gonzalez in and would've finished the game with 5-1 and won the title. Also, Utina would've won his Most Valuable Player title with clean record, without any stain and everyone would've came home with a big smile on their faces thinking about the bonuses that they were going to get, ha! What an happy ending! I can hear the theme song in everyone car stereo on their way back home in my ears now...
Garuda di dadaku..Garuda kebanggaanku..
Kuyakin hari ini pasti menang!!!
^_^
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