How Indonesia turns unknown footballers into beloved superstars: ‘We couldn’t leave the hotel’

Maarten Paes is the starting goalkeeper for Major League Soccer team FC Dallas. Yet he can walk down a busy street in Dallas, Texas, and no one will notice him.

That is not the case online. Or in Indonesia.

Like his teammates in the Indonesian national team, Paes is mobbed whenever he visits the country and has a huge social media following, far bigger than you would expect from a player who has yet to have any trouble in the top flight of football.

Paes, 26, was born in the Netherlands but became an Indonesian citizen in April and was shocked by the rapid growth of his socials: he has 1.7 million followers on Instagram and 1.2 million on TikTok.

“You know it before it happens because you’ve seen it happen to other players. It is such a big country and they are all in love with football,” says Paes.

The 26-year-old had known for a few years that he was eligible to play for Indonesia, but the team contacted him again late last year. “At that time my grandmother was deteriorating,” he says.

“She’s from there and I’ve talked to her about it a lot. It was something I could do that would make her smile at the end of her life. That was huge for me. She said, “I’d love it if you did that.” So she encouraged me and it was an honor to do it for her.”

After the news broke that he was moving to Indonesia, his life changed. “Then I felt I needed a different relationship with my social media, where you can put it away for a while because it can be a little overwhelming,” he says. “It’s surreal to suddenly be adored by so many followers and such a big crowd.”

Paes, who represented the Netherlands in the youth ranks, played his first two games for Indonesia last break. He said the goalless draw against Australia, which was 109 places above Indonesia in the FIFA world rankings, was an eye-opener for more than 70,000 fans at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium.

“It was like realizing for the first time how big it is,” he says. “You see it on the internet, you see the numbers and you can’t really ignore it. Then we couldn’t leave the hotel without security.”

Oxford United, who sit ninth in the Championship, England’s second tier, rarely generate big numbers on social media, but in August a video they posted on Instagram was viewed 5.2 million times.

Australian A-League team Brisbane Roar also experienced a similarly notable uptick in social channel engagement this month. Like Oxford, Brisbane videos posted to Instagram typically receive thousands of views. Still, back-to-back videos on Instagram racked up 4.5 million views and 1.7 million views for Roar.

The explanation? You guessed it: the summer arrival of two Indonesian football superstars, in the form of national team youngsters Marselino Ferdinan and Rafael Struick.

Ferdinan is a 20-year-old attacking midfielder who signed for Oxford last month from Belgian second division club Deinze. Struick is a 21-year-old forward who this month joined Brisbane (owned by Indonesian conglomerate Bakrie Group) from ADO Den Haag, in the second tier of Dutch football.

Neither arrived as household names, at least in Europe or Australia, nor did they come from big-name clubs.

Within days of Ferdinan joining Oxford, his Instagram following grew from 83,000 to 226,000. Some previous posts from Brisbane received fewer than 10 responses. Struick’s announcement numbered 9,000.

This is the Indonesia effect. The country in Southeast Asia has more than 280 million inhabitants and football is the number 1 sport. Cue worship for national team players and fanaticism online and offline.

To illustrate this point, below are some statistics collected by The Athletics to compare Indonesia’s starting XI with the starting XI of the United States Men’s National Team – but we don’t look at expected goals or progressive passing. We compare Instagram followers.

Indonesia’s starting XI for their World Cup qualifier against Australia had a combined Instagram following of 26.9 million. The eleven clubs they play for have fewer than ten million followers together in the same app.

By comparison, USMNT’s last starting XI from their friendly against New Zealand had a combined following of just 1.4 million.

That number could have been higher, but Christian Pulisic, the AC Milan striker with 7.8 million followers on Instagram, was on the bench.

What a comparison of the two starting teams should highlight is the level of support for Indonesian players compared to, say, a country of more than 335 million that will host the Men’s World Cup in 2026.

The only players in the starting XI for Indonesia’s goalless draw against Australia who have fewer followers than the club they play for are Rizky Ridho, who plays centre-back for Indonesian Liga 1 side Persija Jakarta, and Justin Hubner, who plays for Wolverhampton Wanderers plays. the Eredivisie.

Hubner, 21, joined Wolves’ youth academy in 2020. He is yet to play for the senior side and plays the majority of his games at academy level – but with the national team he is treated as if he is playing week in, week out. Real Madrid, that is the fanfare he experiences online and in person.

“I can’t leave my hotel (in Indonesia) because there are people waiting for me and running towards me. Everywhere I go it’s crazy,” says Hubner The Athletics. “If I go into a store and then walk out, there might be a hundred people waiting. I am their idol, so they are waiting for me, for photos and autographs.”

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Hubner was born in the Netherlands and played alongside Xavi Simons (an Instagram star as a teenager at Barcelona, ​​he had a million followers before he was 14 and now plays for RB Leipzig) in the Dutch youth teams. With Indonesia once a Dutch colony, a growing number of players on the national team have dual citizenship.

“I had maybe 5,000 followers on Instagram and when fans realized I had Indonesian blood it went to 30,000 and now I’m at 2.7 million,” Hubner says. “Everything has grown so quickly in the field of social media. Also everything from brand deals. I have so much coming my way right now. It’s a dream.”

The day before the interview The Athleticsits deal with deodorant company Rexona was launched. “A lot of teammates here at Wolves say, ‘Can I change my national team to Indonesia?’, as a joke.

“But the guys here support me and are happy for me. They also want followers because it’s nice to have, but it’s not about followers. The most important thing is that I play for the national team and what comes with that is really fun.”

Hubner spent last season on loan at Japanese side Cerezo Osaka and says there were always Indonesian fans there to watch him, but when he traveled back to England after the two World Cup qualifiers against Saudi Arabia and Australia, there was no welcome party like there. would have been at Jakarta airport. He returned to his apartment alone and without the need for security.

“It’s a different world,” says Hubner of his quiet life in Wolverhampton. “When I come back to Europe it’s like living my own life, no stress. In Indonesia there is a crazy side. You have no privacy wherever you go, there are always people recording you, it’s nice, but it’s also good to have your own space and privacy again.

“When I landed in Indonesia, I tried to hide myself with a cap and a mask, but they recognized me immediately. Even the security and police wanted to take a picture with me. There were 50 to 60 people who wanted a photo. My family is also quite famous now. I created an Instagram account for my mom and she has almost 50,000 followers. Everyone recognizes her. The first time she went to Indonesia, she asked why people wanted to take pictures with her.”

When fans meet Hubner, he says it’s not unusual for them to be overwhelmed with emotion. Some have cried. His mother, Brigitte, has received direct messages from fans dreaming of marrying her son. This star factor is something that clubs try to take advantage of.

“Dallas has noticed,” says goalkeeper Paes. “The involvement in the club has received a major boost. When I play for a club, I like to help them as much as possible, because they help me a lot too. My main focus is to keep the balls out of the net for them, but to help build this club, raise awareness.”

Oxford, Ferdinan’s new club, is co-owned by Erick Thohir, an Indonesian businessman who helped them return to the second tier after a 25-year hiatus. Thohir was also appointed head of the Indonesian Football Association last year and is behind efforts to improve the national team, youth teams and football across Indonesia.

“The exciting thing about Marselino is that he is the best young Indonesian talent,” says Thohir. “He is twenty, he plays and trains in Belgium.

“We need to invest in young players in Oxford. He is young, but he has played for our national team more than twenty times, so the Oxford manager wants to give him a chance, and that is the most important thing.

“If he brings more fame to Oxford, that will be an added value.

“We want to see an opportunity for all players who can play,” he added. “So let’s see if Marselino can survive in Oxford because we don’t give red carpet or VIP treatment. He has to compete.”

(Top photos: Robertus Pudyanto, Mohamed Farag, Zhizhao Wu, Noushad Thekkayil, Getty Images; design: Meech Robinson)