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What a way for a country dreaming of hosting the World Cup to showcase its footballing excellence.

It was the Copa Indonesia football final last Sunday at the Gelora Sriwijaya Stadium in Palembang, South Sumatra. Persipura Jayapura was trailing 1-0 against Sriwijaya FC. In the 60th minute, the Persipura players ran amok after being denied two penalty shots in a row by referee Purwanto. The team got into a scuffle with the referee that culminated in striker Ernest Jeremiah Chukwuma head-butting Purwanto. Jeremiah was given a well-deserved red card. Vehemently protesting the call, the Persipura team left the field and abandoned the game 30 minutes before the end.

“What happened in the final was the pinnacle of a series of disgraceful incidents this season,” said Hinca Panjaitan, head of the Indonesian Football Association disciplinary committee.

Reza Faisal, a 25-year-old football fan who watched the game, said: “It was funny. It was supposed to be the final game of the season, but it was completely anticlimactic. I think it showed that the level of sportsmanship in Indonesia is still very low.”

This season alone, a number of appalling unsportsmanlike episodes have marred Indonesian football, worsening the country’s already distant chances of winning the bid to host the World Cup in 2012.

On June 2, Persib Bandung players, including the goalkeeper, stood beside their goal and allowed their Persitara opponents to score five minutes before the game’s end after the referee, Sutiyono, made a number of bad calls. Sutiyono was escorted off the field by the police for protection against the players.

Rahmad Darmawan, head coach of Sriwijaya FC, said: “Our players need to learn more about the meaning of sportsmanship. They have to prepare themselves as professionals, congratulate the winners and considerately concede as the losers.”

The players often think that they know better than the referee, he said.

Hinca said that players who left the field before the game ended did not occur in “civilized” countries. “In civilized countries, players don’t go on a strike like that,” Hinca said. “They play until the last second, trying to score a goal.”

Senior referee Jimmy Napitupulu is frustrated by the lack of sportsmanship in Indonesian football. “[These players] are like little kids,” he said. “How can they just play up like that during a football game? If you don’t want to lose, don’t play football. Maybe they should just play against elementary school teams.”

Abandoning the game is not the worst or most common form of unsportsmanlike conduct. Players are constantly making news headlines for assaulting referees and, more commonly, each other.

Last November, during a Premier Division game, PSIR Rembang players punched and kicked to the ground the referee Muzair Usman, who was hospitalized afterward. The replacement referee for the game was also pummeled by the players and almost had his uniform completely stripped off.

“Players, club management and team officials prioritize scoring goals and winning the game over everything,” Hinca said. “They never talk about the rules and regulations of the game. So when a decision is made against them, they can’t accept it and become infuriated.”

Napitupulu said: “If the referee makes a mistake, the disciplinary commission should punish them. Why should the players be the judge? They are professionals being paid to play football. They’re not paid to assault the referee.”

In this season’s European Champions League semifinal between English club Chelsea FC and Spanish team FC Barcelona, Hinca said, Chelsea was denied at least three penalties during the game, which cost them the ticket to the finals.

“Even world class referees make mistakes,” he said. “But [Chelsea] didn’t leave the game or attack the referee.”

Head coach Rahmad said that a lot of the violence against the referees occurred because the players had too much pride, needing a scapegoat for a bad performance.

“[The players] feel like they have a lot of pressure to win,” he said, adding that when things don’t go well, they feel they have no choice but to rough up the ref.

But football fan Reza believes that the referees play a significant role in a game and should be held accountable for their mistakes.

“The quality of Indonesian referees is far lower than it should be,” he said. “They fail to fully grasp some rules, like being offside, and sometimes they’re partial to the home team. The referee is the one who controls the game. If he’s incompetent, the players’ can become uncontrollable.”

Even government officials are sometimes involved in the mayhem.

Wearing a safari suit, the district head of Batang in Central Java, Bambang Bintoro, was caught on camera last year chasing the referee of a game between his team, Persibat, and Persikad of Depok.

“[These government officials] don’t understand anything about the game and the rules of football,” Napitupulu said.

“Politicians who have become managers of clubs bring their political power to the field. This is football. The game has its own rules. Just because they’re [government officials] doesn’t mean they can act as they wish.”

At times, the referee is not necessarily innocent. During a game between PSIS Semarang and PSM Makassar in October 2008, a PSM team official went after the referee, Yandri, threw a punch at him and missed. Instead of fleeing from the scene or simply red-carding the player, Yandri merely punched him back.

Hinca said that what the referee did was wrong, but defended his action. “It was self-defense,” he said, adding that he was suspended by the discipline committee.

And it’s not just football: Last November, Halim Sugiarto, the manager of Indonesian Basketball League team Bhinneka Solo, was banned from all national competitions for one year after assaulting a referee in Surabaya. He had stepped onto the court to protest a call by the referee, Herman, who holds an international FIBA certificate. He earned his team a foul and was incensed to the point of beating the referee, disrupting the game for 15 minutes. Tellingly, the incident was not remarkable enough at the time for him to be ejected from the arena, although he was later banned from national games for one year.

Napitupulu said that one of the main reasons players and their entourage never grow out of their violent behavior is because of the Indonesian Football Association’s lenience. “There’s not enough enforcement,” he said.

An unwelcome new precedent was set in Solo in February this year in a match between Persis Solo and Gresik United when two players were taken into police custody following an on-field bust-up between them. Central Java Police Insp. Gen. Alex Bambang Riatmojo — who had been enjoying the match from the VIP stand — found the incident so distressing that the referee was also escorted off the field for questioning in custody. All three were released, but it was the first time in Indonesia’s history of football that players were arrested after an on-field fight.

Sentences being cut short is not a new phenomenon in Indonesia, said Napitupulu. Persik Kediri striker Christian Gonzales was given a one-year suspension last November after punching another player, but the decision was overturned by Nurdin Halid, chairman of the Indonesian Football Association. PSIS manager Yoyok Sukawi, who was banned for one year after trying to hit a referee last October, and Arema Malang goalkeeper Kurnia Mega, who was suspended for one year after provoking fans and inciting a riot against Pupuk Kaltim in September, also had their bans lifted.

“If [the discipline committee] keeps doing this, it will not deter the players,” Napitupulu said.

But at the root of the problem, he said, is the prevailing hot-blooded Indonesian culture. Referring to the Copa Indonesia final, he said: “That was such an embarrassing incident. We had a melee just because the referee failed to see a handball.”

Rahmad rejected the idea that the problem was rooted in the nation’s culture.

“This does not reflect Indonesian culture as a nation,” he said. “This is about the culture of professionalism, which is still in the learning phase. [The players’] professionalism hasn’t fully matured yet.”

Reza said: “We need to improve every aspect of the game. The players, the club officials, the referees and even the association.”

A Year of On-Field Antics

June ’09
Player head-butts referee and team abandons field

February ’09
Two players and referee arrested after pitch brawl

December ’08
District chief chases referee around the field

October ’08
Team official thumps referee, who
lashes back