Indonesian football is a tricky beggar to find out about. For one, there's not a lot of information about it on the internet, and what little you can find is frequently random and contradictory. On top of that, the size of the country and the remoteness of many of its regions means that many of its leagues are only vaguely connected to each other. But most complicated of all are the names of the clubs. Every one of them appears to start with the letters Persi for which the best translation I can find is Dispertions.
For instance, a quick journey around the nation's football stadia will take in teams like
Persib Bandung, Persija Jakarta, Persipura Jayapura, Persisam Putra Samarinda and our local heroes in black and white,
Persidafon Dafonsoro. Based in the small town of Sentani, in
Jayapura province, right up in the remote far north east of the country, right by the border with Papua New Guinea, they currently play in the
Liga Indonesia Second Division, which as far as I can work out is the regional forth tier of their national league.
They play at the 15,000 capacity Stadion Barnabas Youwe, and the majority of their players are local boys. But they do have three foreigners - Bruno Casimir from Cameroon, Carlos Sciucatti from Argentina and the 43 year old Javier Sepulveda from Chile, and one can only wonder what chain of events led these journeymen professionals to play in such an out-of-the-way location!
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