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It’s at kilo­metre 243 that they appear. Just after mid­night on the end­less Asian Highway 2, scur­rying across the fields. You can see their sil­hou­ettes in the dark. See them rea­dying their ammu­ni­tion. See them hole up in the ditch behind the roadside bar­rier. Little war­riors, little guys, most of them no older than 15 or 16 years old. They are fans of Indo­ne­sian top-flight club Persib Bandung and this part of West Java is theirs.

The driver of the Per­sija bus speeds up, but it’s too late. A stone flies, then ano­ther. A direct hit. Shards on the seat. Blood on one guy’s cheek. Stop!” someone yells and the bus scree­ches to a halt in the middle of the road. In the heat of the night, cars stream past, head­lights glare on the asphalt, dri­vers shoot angry glances from behind their winds­creens as the Per­sija Jakarta sup­porters ready them­selves for a counter-attack. No mercy. No fear. But hati-hati, as they say here; stay on guard! They burst from the bus, arming them­selves with any sticks lying around, swin­ging bamboo canes like samurai swords. They fire flares into the Java­nese sky to light up the sur­roun­ding area. There they are!” In the distance, the out­lines of the Persib fans still visible, their faces unflin­ching, smiles tri­um­phant. Already, they are too far away. Cowardly dogs!”

The route goes through West Java. Enemy ter­ri­tory. Some­times you get a warm wel­come.”

Three days ear­lier, on 30 October 2017, the police and foot­ball asso­cia­tion took the decision to move Per­sija Jakarta’s home game against Persib Bandung to Friday after­noon in Sura­karta, 600 kilo­me­tres from the Indo­ne­sian capital. The reason given? Safety con­cerns. Because the so-called Old Indo­nesia Derby or Cla­sico bet­ween these hated rivals often des­cends into vio­lence. It was naïve, though, to think this latest mea­sure would calm the situa­tion. And per­haps it was naïve of me to sign up for this road trip. Eigh­teen hours on the motorway, 18 hours in a 59-seater bus, packed with around 75 Per­sija ultras in high spi­rits, clam­be­ring over each other, sit­ting, lying, like human Tetris. Eigh­teen hours till glory, a highway to heaven, that passes straight through hell.

My contact, himself a young sup­porter, texted me before my depar­ture: Don’t sit too close to the win­dows!” And by way of an expl­ana­tion: The route goes through West Java. Enemy ter­ri­tory. Some­times you get a warm wel­come.” A smiley face. It would have taken an hour to fly to Sura­karta. On the one hand, the safest option. On the other, how can you report on the mad­ness of Indo­ne­sian foot­ball wit­hout loo­king it square in the eye, at least once?

An impro­bable nation

So, this is the story of an epic journey and a pas­sio­nate love affair. There’s no happy ending though. Not in a story about loyalty, pride, honour and that whole sorry mess. It’s about young people, who would do any­thing for their club colours, even die. And that’s no thro­waway line – 65 fans have died at matches in Indo­nesia since 1995. They are part of a story that is also about cor­rupt offi­cials and crazy club owners. About a sport that’s been on life sup­port for years and which is only being kept alive arti­fi­ci­ally. It takes place in a country that writer Eliza­beth Pisani once called the impro­bable nation” – and there is per­haps no better adjec­tive for Indo­nesia.

Any attempt to describe the country starts with super­la­tives: 17,504 islands, 360 eth­ni­ci­ties, 719 lan­guages. The world’s lar­gest Muslim popu­la­tion. The fourth most popu­lated nation on the planet. Greater Jakarta, with its 30 mil­lion inha­bi­tants, is the world’s second big­gest agglo­me­ra­tion after Tokyo. Then, it’s on the images of the country’s bloody past, that almost ever­yone here car­ries inside them­selves. Three decades of dic­ta­tor­ship under Muhammad Suharto after a string of mas­sa­cres in the 1960s. The occu­pa­tion of East Timor in the 1970s. Then, the ine­vi­table ques­tion: What is Indo­nesia today?

Indo­nesia is the big­gest invi­sible thing on the planet”

Famous local busi­nessman John Riady calls it, The big­gest invi­sible thing on the planet”. Because what does anyone really know about it? To the West, it’s the name on the cover of a Lonely Planet guide, a desti­na­tion steeped in back­pa­cker lore, the home of dream bea­ches. Bali, Lombok, the Gili Islands, Nasi Goreng haw­kers in Sura­baya, Wayang shadow theatre in Malang, bajaj dri­vers in Jakarta, Mister, mister, Taxi?” And now and again head­lines like Indo­nesia plans to use cro­co­diles to guard death row drug con­victs.” Impro­bable? This is Indo­nesia!” say people here.

Wel­come to Jakarta”, the Per­sija ultras text me after my arrival. Their club is one of the country’s big­gest, but its glory days are well behind it. They have not won the league since 2001. But for now, all that mat­ters are brag­ging rights in their clash with Persib. This fix­ture might not be as colourful as the Moroccan derby bet­ween Raja and Wydad Casa­blanca or as loud as an Istanbul derby. But it is as brutal as per­haps no other game in the world. It’s a duel super-charged on chaos. Total excess. The ulti­mate extreme. A fight bet­ween the capital and its neigh­bou­ring pro­vince West Java.

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Muhammad Fadli

Our journey to Sura­karta begins on Thursday 2 November. The mee­ting point is a super­market in Tam­bora, West Jakarta, a stone’s throw from the city’s slums. Just the one-hour trip from cen­tral Jakarta is a hel­lish ride through an urban laby­rinth, a dream desti­na­tion for some but for others a rams­hackle behe­moth cob­bled tog­e­ther from spare parts: cor­ru­gated tin huts, iron, rust, sky­scra­pers, shop­ping malls, buil­ding sites, mos­ques, lights, noise, mopeds, cars, the heat. At the moment, it’s espe­ci­ally chaotic, as Jakarta rea­dies itself to host the 2018 Asian Games.

A few years ago, due to wor­sening traffic, the aut­ho­ri­ties made a law that during rush hour, cars had to con­tain at least three pas­sen­gers. It was the cue for the super rich to take their pri­vate heli­c­op­ters to work. The average rich had their chauf­feurs drive them and pick up so-called jockeys” from the side of the road, who make up the num­bers for a few rupiah. Impro­bable? You bet.

Bento

At the super­market in Tam­bora, two young men play songs by Indo­ne­sian musi­cian Iwan Fals on the guitar. During the Suharto era, many con­sidered him the Asian Bob Dylan. It’s not long before the first Per­sija fans rock up and break into a hearty ren­di­tion of his pro­test song Bento, as if they could drown out not only the bloody past but also the dif­fi­cult pre­sent. They’re still children.

Most of them have no jobs, they speak no Eng­lish, they’ve never been abroad, many of them have never left the island of Java. But they know what the two words on their t‑shirts mean: Crazy Boys. It’s one of num­e­rous Per­sija ultra groups. Their gang. Some­thing in this giant, fraying city-island at least, that pro­mises a little sup­port and hap­pi­ness. They sit down in front of the super­market and drink a home­made spirit called Ciu from pla­stic bot­tles. The har­dest streng­then it with insect repel­lent. Drink!” says one of them, hol­ding up the con­coc­tion. What’s your name mister?” asks ano­ther, offe­ring a shy hand­shake that feels like gras­ping at cotton wool.

Luthfi Ryan stands next to the bus. He is wea­ring a track­suit top, glasses and sports a thin beard. He’s sto­ckier than the others and the trip’s orga­niser. He reads out the names of today’s tra­vel­lers from a list and calls them up one by one. The trip costs 300,000 Rupiah, inclu­ding the bus ride, match ticket and food – about 18 euros, a small for­tune for someone used to spen­ding 50 or 60 cents on dinner. Don’t worry,” says Luthfi. We’re get­ting a police escort tonight.” All the way to Sura­karta? Sure!”

Luthfi is 20 years old and works in a copy shop. If you ask him his hopes for the future, he says he wants Per­sija to do well. What he knows about wes­tern cul­ture and Euro­pean foot­ball, has been gleaned by him or his fri­ends from the internet and films. They admire Galatasaray’s ultras, are inte­rested in French, Ita­lian and Argen­ti­nian fan cul­ture. But above all, it’s Eng­land they love. Bands like the Stone Roses and Oasis, foot­ball-casual style, the hip eighties hoo­ligan look. They’ve seen Green Street Hoo­li­gans and Away Days and proudly wear the same labels as the films’ cha­rac­ters on their backs: Sergio Tac­chini, Fila, Adidas. It’s hard not to ima­gine this scene as the typical Asian market – but with knock-offs of entire Euro­pean sub­cul­tures being peddled ins­tead. They’re almost indif­fe­rent to what the ori­ginal really looks like, or that their refe­rences are taken from a dif­fe­rent, bygone age. It’s about the style, the mas­cu­line posing, cut from the 1980s, pasted into modern-day Jakarta.

No one like us, we don’t care. We are Per­sija!“

One young man shows off Face­book pic­tures by a group of Per­sija hoo­li­gans cal­ling them­selves the Tiger Bois”, posing, of course, bare-chested in front of the camera, faces pixel­ated out. They look like the pic­tures of Euro­pean hoo­li­gans they’ve seen. It’s the Inter City Firm who are the toug­hest, right?” asks one kid in a t‑shirt embla­zoned Forever Blo­wing Bubbles”. Soon, ano­ther kid joins us whose shirt reads, No one likes us, we don’t care. We are Per­sija!” West Ham and Mil­wall are roman­ti­cised around here, not Paris Saint Ger­main and Real Madrid. It’s knuck­le­duster nost­algia.

In recent years, if Indo­ne­sian foot­ball gets men­tioned at all in the west, it has been in con­nec­tion with match-fixing, cor­rup­tion or FIFA’s 2015 decision to sus­pend the Indo­ne­sian FA due to poli­tical inter­fe­rence. More recently, the transfer of former Chelsea star Michael Essien to Persib Bandung made a few head­lines. But apart from that? The ste­reo­type per­sists, that Indo­ne­sians prefer bad­minton to the beau­tiful game. In fact though, Indo­nesia is home to Asia’s most foot­ball-mad public. Even China, where a foot­ball miracle is see­mingly underway, pales in com­pa­rison. Indonesia’s foot­ball boom began when Serie A hit screens here in the nine­ties – then after­wards Eng­lish and Spa­nish teams con­quered the country’s affec­tions. Clubs like Real Madrid and Juventus have web­sites available in the country’s offi­cial lan­guage, Bahassa Indo­nesia. Man­chester United’s Indo­ne­sian fan club boasts 31,000 mem­bers and has 114 chap­ters nati­on­wide.

And then there are the dome­stic leagues, which barely register inter­na­tio­nally, and whose qua­lity is com­pa­rable to the German third divi­sion. Despite num­e­rous scan­dals, they con­tinue to thrive. Take a look at some more of those super­la­tives: In 1985, 150,000 people des­cended on the final of the national ama­teur league at Gelora Bung Karno Sta­dium. Today, even a second divi­sion team like PSS Sleman regu­larly attracts around 30,000 fans. And a top-flight club like Persib Bandung has 10 mil­lion face­book fans – more than any other club in Asia.

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We set off at around 7pm. There’s a prayer as we get underway. The fans ask god to grant the Per­sija players strength and speed. You’ll Never Walk Alone blares from the spea­kers – it’s a cover ver­sion by the Indo­ne­sian punk band Keotik. Next up is Oasis’ Live Forever – the ori­ginal this time. Maybe I just want to fly,” sings Liam Gal­lagher, Want to live, I don’t want to die…” For these fans, it’s the per­fect sound­track. We make our first stop after 17 kilo­me­tres, at a rest area, and for the first time I get a sense of how big this tour is. It’s not just the Crazy Boys hit­ting the road to Sura­karta; there are hundreds, thou­sands of people, a whole convoy tra­vel­ling down the highway tonight. Some are even making the journey by moped. Fans stumble out of buses and cars and head towards the satay seller. Ciu bot­tles are passed from hand to hand. Mister, mister, drink!” They won’t touch beer. It costs too much – and has too little effect.

In 30 kilo­me­tres, it’s going to get dan­ge­rous.” Where’s the police escort, I ask. The police? They’re not coming any­more.”

Before we drive off again, Rifki Haikal checks the route on his phone. The 20-year-old is wea­ring a wind­breaker and Bri­tish flat cap – Leeds in West Java. We’re still safe for now,” he says. But in 30 kilo­me­tres, it’s going to get dan­ge­rous.” Where’s the police escort, I ask. The police? They’re not coming any­more.” Rifki used to work in a local super­market, but curr­ently he’s unem­ployed. He dreams of having his own com­pany, wants to pro­duce his own clo­thes, print cool slo­gans on T‑shirts, like he ima­gines young people in Eng­land do. He was pre­sent last year, when Persib fans atta­cked a convoy with stones, kil­ling two of his fri­ends. One of them was already on the ground, when an atta­cker took an axe to him until he stopped moving. No mercy. Rifki stares out of the window. He can’t explain how the inci­dent has affected him, nor why he’s making a similar journey tonight. I’m fol­lo­wing my heart,” he says. May god pro­tect me.” Then he falls silent.

The first sign of trouble comes at kilo­metre 39. A bus has been atta­cked and one of its win­dows is shat­tered. Thank­fully, no-one is hurt. We make a quick stop, in the middle of the motorway. Dinar and Raina take a seat on the nea­rest crash bar­rier. They are 15 and 16 respec­tively and the only girls on our bus. They’re still at school and aren’t keen to talk about their fears either. They’d rather talk about their hopes for a strong Per­sija per­for­mance. What about their par­ents? Hati-hati, they say, be careful. Near them Anas sits on the tarmac, a 17-year-old, who is also still at school. He’s wea­ring an extra-small Oasis T‑shirt over his tiny frame; he’s like a half-por­tion, so skinny, you worry the next gust of wind might blow him back to Jakarta.

Action!”

That’s just how it is with rivals, like Liver­pool and Everton, West Ham and Mil­wall. It’s the same ever­y­where,” he says, trying to look tough. It’s about life and death.” He takes a swig from a bottle of Ciu, washing down some crisps. Does he know any Persib fans per­so­nally, I ask? Sure,” he says. A lot of my class­mates are Persib fans, even some of my fri­ends.” So what hap­pens if he encoun­ters them tonight? They’ll have to die.” He smiles. His fri­ends smile with him and from out of the bus Liam’s voice sings, Lately, did you ever feel the pain?”

Even­tually, a couple of poli­cemen do make an appearance. They stroll along the roadside bar­riers at a lei­su­rely pace, with their pump-action shot­guns in hand, as if they were actors playing poli­cemen, wai­ting for someone to yell, Action!” What’s real here? What’s fic­tion? Where did the atta­ckers dis­ap­pear to? Who knows any­more?

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Muhammad Fadli
Muhammad Fadli
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It’s absurd the aut­ho­ri­ties moved this game to a so-called neu­tral venue in Sura­karta – they already banned away fans at matches bet­ween Per­sija and Persib years ago. The pro­blem now is that Persija’s sta­dium is closed for reno­va­tions ahead of the Asian Games. The team have been playing home games in Bekasi, on Jakarta’s out­skirts – but already in West Java, Persib country. The police have shunted the derby pro­blem to someone else – crea­ting this convoy and all that goes with it. A sui­cide mis­sion.

Psst,” hisses one of the guys. Adjap!” He sneeks up behind one of the poli­ceman then reveals a sti­cker with A.C.A.B” embla­zoned on it. Even Rifki, the boy in the wind­breaker, breaks into a big smile. As if this whole trip were a game, like Batt­le­ships on the motorway. One ship’s hit, but the rest of the fleet is good to go. Persib are weak and we are strong!” says Rifki, as the convoy gets moving again. Out­side the bus, the lights from Ame­rican fast food restau­rants fly by, as if from a distant uni­verse, ano­ther life­time. McDonald’s, Ken­tucky Fried Chi­cken and so on and so on. You and I are gonna live forever.

Why such dis­re­gard for human life?

Until now, there’s been little public debate about foot­ball vio­lence in Indo­nesia. Eight years ago, a film did come out that touched on the sub­ject – Romeo Juliet, a love story bet­ween a Per­sija sup­porter and a female Persib fan. The director wanted to show that the two sides could get on. But some fans were outraged, clai­ming the plot was pure fan­tasy. Beyond that, the Indo­ne­sian maga­zine Tempo occa­sio­nally reports on fan cul­ture in a know­led­geable, inves­ti­ga­tive way. A few months ago, the Guar­dian ran a trans­la­tion of a Tempo story under the head­line Jakarta’s Hoo­ligan Pro­blem”. It was the first time the topic had been covered exten­si­vely in a major wes­tern news outlet.

Apart from that, it’s down to lone cam­pai­gners with little to no lob­bying power to try and change the situa­tion. That includes jour­na­list Akmal Mar­hali and former offi­cial Llano Mahar­dika. A couple of years ago, they formed the orga­ni­sa­tion Save our soccer” (SOS), to get some kind of moni­to­ring system off the ground. With the help of num­e­rous vol­un­teers, they have shone a light on the game in Indo­nesia, kee­ping a tally of the riots, the deaths. A day before my depar­ture for Sura­karta, I meet them in a café in cen­tral Jakarta. Mar­hali, 38, is wea­ring beige trou­sers, a black shirt and a deter­mined look. He’s brought a stack of docu­ments with him. He leans closer when we speak, as if he’s scared someone will listen in. 65 deaths!” he says and lets the number hang in the hot air.

65 deaths in Indo­ne­sian foot­ball since 1995, each one cata­logued by him and his vol­un­teers. In 2017 alone, they recorded 11 foot­ball-related deaths. The real number could be even higher. Mar­hali shows me a graph showing how each of the vic­tims died: pun­ches and kicks (24), stab wounds (14), others fell from moving buses, were hit by fire­works or shot. One guy was beaten to death because he failed to cele­brate a Per­sija goal with enough enthu­siasm. The Per­sija fans around him assumed he was a Persib sup­porter who had snuck into the home end. But where does this rage come from? Why such dis­re­gard for human life?

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Muhammad Fadli

The clues all point towards the past and the decades of dic­ta­tor­ship under Suharto. Some of the men who mas­sacred over a mil­lion com­mu­nists in the mid-six­ties are still alive today – and are treated as heroes. They speak publicly and in grue­some detail about the mur­ders they com­mitted. They talk about the heads that rolled, the penises they cut off, and do it with a smile. But Indonesia’s fasci­na­tion with the extreme also has some­thing to do with the post-Suharto years, the period after 1998. Then, the country’s regions and cities took on more poli­tical signi­fi­cance and a strong sense of local patrio­tism emerged. That country was under­going a rude awa­ke­ning. Punks walked Jakarta’s streets, art gal­le­ries were ope­ning, news­pa­pers printed cri­tical articles and even if foot­ball sta­diums had always pro­vided more freedom than else­where, sud­denly you could sing, shout and swear like never before. Above all, you could fight. At the same time, the internet was taking off and showing young Indo­ne­sians, what they’d been missing all these years. All of a sudden, the world didn’t seem so big – even Indo­nesia with its 17,504 islands seemed orderly and easy to get a handle on. You just had to click on the right links.

Who can young people here trust? Where are the role models for them?”

Today, the country has a demo­cratic govern­ment but, says Mar­hali, that doesn’t mean ever­y­thing is clean and above board. That’s espe­ci­ally true in foot­ball, where the people in charge were once decision-makers in the Suharto regime. Who can young people here trust? Where are the role models for them?” asks Mar­hali, before embar­king on a half-hour lec­ture about offi­cials who make Sepp Blatter, Jack Warner and co sound like boy scouts. He tells me about cor­rupt com­pa­nies, who own four or five first-divi­sion teams at the same time, an open goal for bet­ting syn­di­cates from Sin­ga­pore and Malaysia.

He pulls out his phone and shows me secret recor­dings made by him and his col­le­agues. In one of them, a brief­case of money swaps hands for a match to be can­celled. He tells me about Nurdin Halid, the former foot­ball asso­cia­tion pre­si­dent who spent two of his eight years in power in prison for tax offences. Mas­sive fan pro­tests broke out in 2011 when he stood for re-elec­tion. Oil bil­lionaire Arifin Pani­goro used the inci­dent to set up an illegal second league. He bought up all the teams in it or founded new ones. After that, 15 teams played in the national first divi­sion. Ano­ther 19 played in the par­allel, illegal Super League”. This is Indo­nesia!

In such a maze of mad­ness, the issue of fan vio­lence barely raises an eye­brow with govern­ment or the foot­ball aut­ho­ri­ties. There’s always some­thing more important going on. In late May 2012, Islamic hard­li­ners stopped Lady Gaga from per­forming in Indo­nesia. At roughly the same time, three Persib fans were killed at the Cla­sico. Fans and vio­lence aren’t part of our remit,” the country’s foot­ball asso­cia­tion, the PSSI, would announce in 2016. The PSSI’s new general secre­tary, Ratu Tisha Destria, has none­theless pro­mised a more modern approach. She wants to set up a depart­ment for fan issues.

New begin­ning

Mar­hali is scep­tical. He flicks through a back issue of 11 Freunde. His eyes settle on an image of Bayern fans kettled by police. We need some­thing similar here,” he says. Secu­rity checks at sta­diums, better infra­struc­ture, cameras, a pro­fes­sional ticke­ting system, Euro­pean offi­cials.” In a matter of moments, Mar­hali has laid out a mini law and order pro­gramme. Per­haps it’s a sign of his frus­tra­tion. Is an iron fist really the only way to solve the pro­blem? Mar­hali thinks for a moment. He would prefer, he says, a lighter touch. Do you know what would be good?” he says, his eyes lighting up. If we could just let foot­ball die for a few years. Just one or two. Then we could build it back up from scratch.” He would also like to orga­nise a benefit tour­na­ment for all the vic­tims of foot­ball vio­lence. Every club would take part and pic­tures of the dead would be hung around the sta­dium. We would make them visible,” he says. That way, fans would have to talk to each other about them.” He pauses. You know what the foot­ball asso­cia­tion says about that? Mr. Mar­hali, that’s not a good idea.’”

Kilo­metre 243. The bus brakes at 100 km/​h on the highway, as the stone – the fifth or sixth attack of the night – hits the back window. As most of the Per­sija fans make chase over the fields, others sweep the broken glass away.

A few years ago, the heads of the major rival fan groups agreed a truce. But how are you sup­posed to con­trol 10,000 fans?” asks Diky Soe­marno. The 30-year-old is the general secre­tary for Jak­mania, the umbrella orga­ni­sa­tion for Persija’s fan­base. His T‑shirt reads Sleep, Eat, Per­sija, Repeat.” Unlike most of the others in the convoy, he speaks fluent Eng­lish and has a well-paid job at a South Koren internet com­pany. He’s a father to a five-year-old son called Mikael Zola Adidas. Zola for the former Chelsea star, Adidas for, well, Adidas. Diky’s first Per­sija game was in 1998. It was just before the end of the Suharto regime. He joined Jak­mania the very next day. Soon after, he was explo­ring the internet, when he dis­co­vered the web­site belon­ging to Argentina’s Barra Bravas, who scale sta­dium fences in ecstasy after each goal. By the end of the 1990s. Diky saw his first fan cho­reo­gra­phies at Indo­ne­sian club Arema Maland and thought, Per­sija needs some­thing like that, too.”

This is Indo­nesia. You can’t explain things logi­cally.”

Diky is smart and elo­quent. He likes Cold­play, he’s been to Sin­ga­pore and Thai­land. Some day soon, he’d like to visit Japan. Like the others, he believes in god, heaven and hell. But also like the others, he drifts into vio­lent rhe­toric. He is a good fighter, he says. He claims he can no longer go to Bandung, because they would kill him there. I ask him if this fan vio­lence isn’t haram, a sin? Diky rolls his eyes. This is Indo­nesia,” he says. You can’t explain things logi­cally.”

Diky does explain how the war with Persib started. It wasn’t over fans’ faith like Celtic and Ran­gers. Nor was it about rich and poor like the Argentina’s Boca Juniors and River Plate rivalry – even if Per­sija fans like to claim Persib can only afford players like Michael Essien, because they are backed by Indonesia’s fourth richest man Anthoni Salim. Diky says the rivalry, like so much in Indo­nesia, was just a matter of chance. As if one day, sup­porters of both teams decided they needed a good enemy. Until the end of the mill­en­nium, the derby was actually bet­ween PSMA Medan and Persib – to this day, many still call this match Indonesia’s real Cla­sico. An eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth. Of course, there are count­less other sto­ries about the ori­gins of the rivalry doing the rounds, and of course, Persib fans claim the war was started by Per­sija sup­porters. One ver­sion claims it began in 2001, when fans from both teams took part in a tele­vi­sion quiz. On the way home to Bandung, the story goes, Per­sija fans atta­cked the Persib con­tin­gent because they were angry to have lost the quiz.

A last Stop

It’s late mor­ning by the time the bus makes it out of West Java. We make one last stop at Kendal, about 100 kilo­me­tres from Sura­karta. A shop there sells hijabs and Hello Kitty dolls. We break­fast on instant noodles, coffee and ciga­rettes. The Ciu and the attacks have left their mark. Faces are puffy. The buses are missing win­dows. Some of the group sidle off to a mosque on the other side of the road. They thank god, that ever­yone emerged uns­ca­thed. And they pray again, for Persija’s players to be strong and fast.

The convoy rea­ches Surakarta’s Manahan sta­dium at 1pm – it’s a giant con­crete struc­ture in the city centre. Its three ter­races are sold out and decked out in orange, full of ban­ners and flags. Some 18,000 spec­ta­tors have come, mostly from Jakarta. The ther­mo­meter reads 35 degrees Cel­sius. None­theless, many fans are wea­ring jeans, ano­raks and hats. Four capos are packed on to a podium at the fence in front of the fans. Behind a large metal gate hundreds of sup­porters who couldn’t get tickets try to catch a glimpse of the game. The mood is relaxed. Hardly any police. Lax secu­rity. Because of the ban on them atten­ding away games, there are no Persib fans to be seen. But appearances can be decep­tive. The match will serve up 90 minutes of Indo­ne­sian foot­ball mad­ness. Anguish in the stands, a sen­ding-off, a wrongly ruled-out goal, a brawl – and by the time it’s all over, almost ano­ther death.

20171103 11 FREUNDE PERSIJA 0014 RZ Kopie
Muhammad Fadli

But first, the skies open above the chan­ting fans. A mon­soon-like rain pours down on Sura­karta and the fans look less like they’ve tra­velled through West Java and more like they’ve swum the Indian Ocean to be here. The referee waves play on, as a shaman in the sta­dium con­course appeals to nature for better wea­ther and Persib scores what looks like a legi­ti­mate goal. Even from 100 meters away, you can see the ball cross the line, bulge the net, then roll back out on to the pitch. There’s outrage in the stands, then relief. The ref rules out the goal, saying it hit the crossbar.

The shaman is cle­arly a pro­fes­sional – the storm lifts for the second half. But in the 70th minute, a red mist des­cends on the fans. All of a sudden hundreds of them pour down the ter­race steps and begin bea­ting a fellow spec­tator. A couple of indif­fe­rent poli­ceman watch it happen. The capos try to calm the situa­tion but it’s too late – the guy has no chance. When three ste­wards finally wade in to pull the injured man on to the run­ning track, he looks like he’s gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson. Rumours start to fly. The victim was a Persib fan. He’d infil­trated the Per­sija sup­port. It was him who reve­aled the convoy’s route to his Persib fri­ends. The atmo­sphere is tense now – at least for a moment. Then, in the 77th minute, the referee gives a penalty to Per­sija for a push and all is right in the world. Bruno Lopes con­verts the spot kick to make it 1 – 0, the win­ning goal.

The fans almost suf­fo­cate on their own cele­bra­tions. Maybe I just want to fly. But five minutes later, the emo­tional rol­ler­co­aster has moved on again. In the 83rd minute, there’s a Persib sen­ding off. Minute 84: a brawl on the halfway line. The Persib players crowd the referee, then leave the pitch before he can blow the final whistle. Per­sija win. Rifki, Luthfi, Raina and the others head back to the bus. Time for the trip home. 18 hours back to Jakarta. 18 hours on the highway to heaven – with ano­ther trip through hell. On the journey back, the fans dis­cover that the kid who was beaten up, came from Sura­karta. He was a neu­tral spec­tator, but the hem of his T‑shirt was blue – Persib’s colour. He was lucky. But the body count in Indo­ne­sian foot­ball seems set to tick up unche­cked.