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The naturalization project for Indonesian national team players received positive recognition from the South Korean media / Photo: Kolase
The naturalization project for Indonesian national team players received positive recognition from the South Korean media. In their report, they assessed that the strategy to naturalize players of Indonesian descent was considered better than Chinese.
Since Shin Tae-yong coached the Indonesian National Team, the strategy to naturalize players of descent has been intensively implemented. Many players have officially obtained Indonesian Citizen (WNI) status.
These include Sandy Walsh, Jordi Amat, Shayne Pattynama, Ivar Jenner, Marc Klok and Rafael Struick. They are naturalized players from the Shin Tae-yong era and are mainstays in the Indonesian national team. However, the coach from South Korea is still not satisfied and is still looking for players to naturalize.
Shin Tae-yong needs quality players to appear in the 2024 Asian Cup which will take place in Qatar from 12 January to 10 February 2024. Naturalized players are an option to boost the achievements of the Indonesian National Team.
The Indonesian national team is in Group D with Japan, Iraq and Vietnam. Elkan Baggott et al are a team that is considered weak, because they are ranked 145th and the lowest compared to the three Group D participants who are able to enter the top 100 in the world ranking.
Meanwhile, Best Eleven considers Shin Tae-yong choosing players of European descent to be naturalized, as reducing the gap in the quality of the Indonesian national team with the top Asian teams. Nevertheless, the South Korean media believes that there are quite a lot of six naturalized players in the Indonesian National Team.
“Coach Shin (Tae-yong) believes that naturalized European players are very important to narrow the gap with big teams in Asia,” said the Best Eleven report, Thursday (2/11/2023).
Best Eleven also considers the naturalization project for Indonesian national team players to be better than China’s, which has to spend a lot of money to get a player to change nationality. Meanwhile, the Indonesian National Team chose to naturalize players who have Indonesian lineage, especially the Netherlands.
“This is not naturalization which is carried out by spending a lot of money on unrelated players such as those in China. These players are players of ‘Indonesian descent’ who were born in Europe, especially the Netherlands or Belgium,” continued Best Eleven.
(fly)