FOOTBALL AND BRUTAL FANATICSM
Football is awesome sport. You know that most popular sport in the world has become like a soul that comes into our blood. This sport has been bigger than ever and became the industry that is worth millions euro. It is funny if I have to be honest. You are trying as hard as you can to catch the ball, running, kicking, and boom, suddenly you become a rich man. Maybe it is not that simple, but come on, what kind of job that gives you a million rupiah in the sport unless this?
I am here not to talk about how popular football is, but how football can bring hatred to us, football lovers. Yes, you can say that football is about respect and fair play, but that is not in the fact. It is competition, as you can probably guess, there must be a winner and a loser in it. It can bring rivalry, of course it is normal. But if the rivalry becomes hatred and then violence, so we have to rethink and introspecting to ourselves. What have we done? Why could this beautiful sport be a ‘monster’? We should being entertained by this sport, not being insecure and scared.
I will tell you a story about two football club’s supporters, Viking as Persib’s supporter and The Jak as Persija’s supporter. This story began in about 1999. When The Jak came to Bandung watching football match between Persib versus Persija. Everything was going to be fine, The Jak has got harm welcomed by Viking and they sang together. The trouble was starting when too much people in stadium and not all of The Jak could entering in it. The Jak in outside of stadium got anger and made some problems like throw the bricks to whatever, do vandalism, and shout dirty words out. Things was just getting even worst when Viking replied their attitude with violence and we all know what happened next. Since then, the relationship between Viking and The Jak is bad until now. Now, every time The Jak came to Bandung or Viking came to Jakarta, there was always fighting between them both.
So, what is the morale of story? No, there is not. It is painful fact. Seriously, this rivality is so wasteful. We should throw away our egoism and start to appreciate each other. We should stop this decadence and move on for the better future of football in Indonesia. Don’t you see, Indonesia has so many talents like we have Java, and our black pearl, Papua. Instead, we fight each other, why do not we start to build our dreams to see Indonesia perform in World Cup one day?
It has been a long time ago, we have waited Indonesia lifting the trophy and it never happen. So, this is time for us to rise up in the world. It is okay, it takes the hardest work of us to reach it, but as long as we have faith of ourselves, I believe we can!
Here is my advice for Indonesia football in the future. We must stop our war and stop hate each other, basically, we are brother and we can build our football together. That is the fundamental thing, we can’t make Indonesia football be better if there’s still hatred and vengeance in ourselves.
