love in the afternoon

Indonesians love soccer—unfortunately, they do not happen to be any good at it. It is quite the unfortunate case, especially as the sport verges on national obsession.

There is a national semi-pro league and every day around late afternoon you can turn on the television and find a football match. That is if the television is not already turned to the football and surrounded by chain-smoking, occupation-less men, as it usually is.

The game is a veritable zeitgeist object in that it is a frenetic, often out of control, clutching game that involves profuse sweating. All aspects of the league are heavily tied in with cigarette advertising (big business in Indonesia) and I am told that the players make, not only by Indonesian standards, a handsome living. I imagine that this accounts for the ‘Emersons,’ ‘Silvestros,’ or ‘Robertos,’ that every team seems to have a few of, what I imagine to be the football equivalent of the most miserable exile (a potentially smarmy book idea for anyone who knows more about the sport), resulting in hilarious after-match interviews when African-born players an Indonesian commentators try to cobble together some common ground in English.

For me, what Indonesian football lacks in polish, talent, or professionalism it more than makes up for in comedy. If you feel low in the afternoon, it is always there for a quick and easy laugh. However, my favorite thing about Indonesian football is watching it with Indonesians as the catch-all Indonesian word for basically anything good happening is sukses (sounds a bit like success). At the slightest provoking development they can be counted on to murmur, ‘sukses!’ which for some unknown reason delights me.

A few days ago, while watching a match after school, I saw a game stopped for fifteen minutes while the justice of a late second half penalty kick was pleaded, a scene that included the goalie running down from the opposite end of the field and repeatedly trying to give the referee the old high-school-locker-room-nut-tap-move until he was eventually restrained. Not only was the call in his team’s favor, but no cards were awarded.

When order was finally restored and the penalty struck the home team down a goal, the stands began to empty while the chain link fence around the pitch began to fill up with fans threatening to storm the field. Understandably, the officiating pulled a quick about face and the home team scored in the 107^th minute (another first for me) to tie the match. Sukses!