Bergas Brillianto looks at how Indonesia have used enhanced scouting to build a squad that leverages their diaspora population
Three years ago, Indonesia finished the second round of 2022 World Cup qualifying with just one point. Placed in a group with the United Arab Emirates and fellow Southeast Asians Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand, Indonesia conceded 27 goals and scored just five in eight matches. It was a terrible run, although it’s understandable given that they were 160th in the FIFA world rankings at the time. Performance-wise, it was poor.
Indonesia is big. And in a country of more than 250 million people, football is the number one sport. Indonesians love watching football, but have previously not been especially good at playing it. In 2021, the time they sat bottom of the group during that qualification period, they had never reached the knockout stages of the Asian Cup and the last time they did qualify to the tournament was as hosts in 2007. They have never won the regional competition AFF Cup, while neighbours Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand have done so. But it seems like Indonesia is tired of being bad.
Recently, things have started to look up for them. In the last four years, they have (finally) qualified for the Asian Cup, reached the knockout stage for the first time, and successfully reached the third round of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers. They are in the same tough group as Australia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, China, and Japan. They are still the lowest-ranked team in the latest FIFA Ranking, but they haven’t fared too badly so far. They have drawn three times against Australia, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia and only lost once away to China. Three points from three games against countries with more experience at this stage is quite an achievement.
Scout, Recruit Players Like a Pro Club
If anyone is wondering how the former 160th-ranked country has made significant progress and is in with a chance of qualifying for the World Cup for the first time (as an independent country), the answer is that they have started to act like a football club. They are scouting players to find top talent, ‘recruiting’ them and building brand new teams.
In last week’s World Cup qualifier against Bahrain, ten of Indonesia’s 11 starters hadn’t played in their domestic league. Now, that may sound normal for some national teams (or, at least, fielding a non-domestic-based side is normal, even if players started in the domestic set-up). But the next fact might give you pause for thought: none of the XI were born or grew up in Indonesia, let alone played. These are the players who play for Indonesia through this ‘recruitment’ system. They are the naturalised players, or as the locals prefer to call them, the diaspora players. And they are all new to the team (they are naturalised in the last couple of months to three years).

Yes, a naturalisation strategy has been in place for more than ten years. But the current situation is different. Previously, it focused on talents who played in Indonesia or the Netherlands (sometimes at pretty low levels); now, the focus is far broader in terms of leagues looked at and players assessed. Obviously, there still needs to be a familial relation to Indonesia at parent or grandparent level, but by scouting a much wider group of players, Indonesia has been able to find players beyond the traditional hunting grounds of domestic or Ducth football. Now, many of the players assessed are starting in the first or second division of their respective domestic leagues. The system has found a player playing as a starter for a Serie A club, and another who is playing in the Europa League. They recently ‘signed’ a Champions League calibre player in Kevin Diks, who plays for FC Copenhagen.

While every country can and does take advantage of this naturalisation process, Indonesia’s approach makes it different from many. By first building a massive database of every potential Indonesian national player, including those only available through a process of naturalisation, and then assigning them to a scouting pipeline, Indonesia can broaden its focus beyond the traditional route of monitoring players born in the country of origin. In addition, Indonesia’s significant diaspora population makes this far more effective (although logistically tricky) than just concentrating on ‘obvious’ choices.
Handan Hamedan, an official from the country’s sports ministry, spoke to local podcast media and said there are several scouting processes they go through to find the players. First of all, they gathered the information about the players who have blood ties to the country. This is the most difficult task, and includes exhaustive database searching. Then they run a scouting process that has to meet these requirements: a scout has to watch the players he has scouted for at least three games with a minimum of 60 minutes played for each game. Sometimes this requires asking the club where the player plays for the video footage of the player in order to scout from there. The scout will then analyse the player’s games and numbers. It’s essentially the same process as a club would undertake and it’s worked: Indonesia have quite rapidly been able to find players of higher calibre, able to improve the national team.
The process then continues by contacting the agent or interviewing the players until the team of coaches and the club agree on the selection of players. Sometimes, if it’s difficult to contact the players directly, the federation will contact the local scout or agent to help them analyse the players. Hamedan claimed that Indonesia worked with the agent who worked with Manchester City. Contacting the players and interviewing them is an important part of the process, firstly because they need to pitch the idea of playing for Indonesia, and secondly because many of these players have had no prior contact with the IFA and need to understand the process and also be a good fit for the national team set-up.
The Indonesian Football Association claims to have more than 100 scouted players in its database. The results of this process and progress can be seen in their current senior roster. In addition to Diks, Indonesia now have players of the calibre of Jay Idzes (Venezia) and Mees Hilgers (FC Twente) in their starting line-up. They have also persuaded Maarten Paes, who plays in the MLS for FC Dallas, to become their ‘new’ goalkeeper. And it’s not just for the senior team. They are also looking for young players to play at group level.
INDONESIA’S DIASPORA PLAYERS IN THE LATEST FIFA MATCHDAY | ||
Name | Age | Club (Tier) |
Maarten Paes | 26 | FC Dallas (1) |
Mees Hilgers | 23 | Twente (1) |
Jay Idzes | 24 | Venezia (1) |
Calvin Verdonk | 27 | NEC Nijmegen (1) |
Shayne Pattynama | 26 | Eupen (1) |
Nathan Tjoe-A-On | 22 | Swansea (2) |
Sandy Walsh | 29 | KV Mechelen (1) |
Thom Haye | 29 | Almere City (1) |
Ivar Jenner | 20 | Jong Utrecht (2) |
Ragnar Oratmangoen | 26 | FCV Dender (1) |
Rafael Struick | 21 | Brisbane Roar (1) |
Eliano Reijnders | 23 | PEC Zwolle (1) |
Jordi Amat | 32 | Johor Darul Ta’zim (1) |
Indonesia are also fortunate that the head of their football association is also the minister for state-owned enterprises, Erick Thohir. The former Inter Milan president has the political clout and football experience to ensure that the naturalisation process runs smoothly, both legally and formally. In short, the combination of an advanced scouting system and political power helps them get the players they now have.

Recruitment That Fits the Coach’s Strategy
Indonesia knows they are often regarded as the underdogs in Asia. It shows in the way they play under Shin Tae-Yong. The Korean coach doesn’t try to force Indonesia to play more possession-based, dominant football, especially against teams that are better than them on paper or in the FIFA rankings. Instead, Shin prefers his team to focus on defence first and then try to attack in transition. They could be aggressive in terms of pressing, but they can also defend in a deep block with 5-2-3 shape. In terms of attacking, they could attack with direct and quick counterattacks – relying a little on the individual quality and pace of their attackers.
With such a preference, it makes sense that most of Indonesia’s new recruits are defensive players. That seems to be their priority. The trio of Idzes, Diks, and Hilgers show that Indonesia now have a back three capable of competing at the highest level in Europe. They also have Jordi Amat, who has plenty of European experience, as well as Elkan Baggott, who plays in the second tier of English football, and Calvin Verdok, who is a starter for Eredivisie side NEC Nijmegen. Their quality and experience of playing against some of Europe’s best players has helped the team improve defensively.

In World Cup qualifying, Indonesia’s defence has looked promising, conceding just five goals in four games so far, including a clean sheet against Australia. They have done so despite being the underdogs in most of their matches. There are some aspects that need to be improved, such as focusing more on set-piece defence and structuring the rest of the defence better, but Indonesia aren’t always inferior defensively in 1-on-1 situations now because they have better players. They are not as bad as they used to be in terms of pace, decision-making, power, and (sometimes) height in defence.
In attack, they also have some naturalised players. But in terms of quality, they are still struggling to find those of the same level as the defensive recruits. Their main striker, Rafael Struick, who has started eight times in all the qualifiers, is still young and plays for Brisbane Roar in Australia. Ragnar Oratmangoen, another blood relative, plays for FCV Dender in the Belgian top flight but hasn’t had a chance to start yet. It is also the reason why Shin has often opted to start local products like Malik Risaldi, Witan Sulaeman, and Marselino Ferdinan in the forward positions, despite the latter’s lack of competitive game time for his club.
So, in this context, the homework for those stakeholders involved is to find good attackers to complement the defensive unit they’ve built. On the other hand, Shin as a coach also needs to create more variety in his attack so that they can’t just rely on transition or individual quality. If they can do that, Indonesia will have a real chance of going to the USA in 2026. Admittedly, they still have six games to play, and they haven’t yet come up against the likes of Japan, but the fact that they were able to draw with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on the road shows that there is hope if things can be sorted out and performances improve.
The National Team Just One Side of the Coin For Indonesian Football
If things are going well for the national team, football in Indonesia, like in general, still has a few problems. The schedule is still inconsistent, the standard of refereeing could be improved, and there is violence on and off the pitch. The infrastructure is far from ideal. Two years ago, the country suffered one of its worst moments when 135 people died in the Kanjuruhan tragedy. Despite successfully hosting the U-17 World Cup last year, the country’s youth and grassroots development has been criticised. The women’s tournament hasn’t been held for years.
Stakeholders seem to be focused on the national team at the expense of other aspects that need improvement. While many would agree that the success of the national team would reflect the success of football development in the country, this is not the case in Indonesia. They’re getting bigger and bigger and are well on their way to achieving many things they so far haven’t. But it is fair to say that there is another side to the story. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed that could help them to be more consistent in terms of success and not always rely on quick-fix processes.
Because there’s a hope that the good moment they’re seeing now is just the beginning. And in order for it to be successful in the long term, everything has to start right. The roadmap must be clear, infrastructure needs to be fixed, the plan from youth, grassroots, amateur to professional must be properly taken care of. Relying on the federation to oversee a consistently successful naturalisation process is risky, and so a greater focus on the domestic leagues and youth development will also help to have a good national team in the future.
Header image copyright IMAGO / NurPhoto / CFOTO