How Indonesia turns unknown footballers into revered 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 without anyone noticing him.

This is not the case online. Or in Indonesia.

Like his teammates on the Indonesian national team, Paes is mobbed on his visits to the country and has a huge social media following, far larger than you would expect from a player who has yet to trouble the highest echelons of football brought.

Paes, 26, was born in the Netherlands but took Indonesian citizenship in April and was shocked by the rapid growth of his social networks – 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 with other players. It’s such a huge country and everyone loves football,” says Paes.

The 26-year-old knew he would be eligible to play for Indonesia for a few years, but the team turned to him again late last year. “At this time, my grandmother’s health was deteriorating,” he says.

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

When it was announced that he was moving to Indonesia, his life changed. “That’s when I felt like I needed to relate to my social media in a different way where you can put it aside for a while because it can be a little overwhelming,” he says. “It’s surreal to suddenly have so many followers and such a large crowd adoring you.”

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

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

Oxford United, which sits ninth in the Championship, England’s second division, rarely scores big on social media, but in August a video posted to Instagram reached 5.2 million views.

Australian A-League club Brisbane Roar also experienced a similarly strange spike in engagement on social channels this month. As in Oxford, videos posted on Instagram in Brisbane are typically viewed thousands of times. But back-to-back videos posted to Instagram earned Roar 4.5 million and 1.7 million views.

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

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

They were neither a well-known name, at least in Europe or Australia, nor did they come from well-known clubs.

Within days of Ferdinan joining Oxford, her number of followers on Instagram grew from 83,000 to 226,000. Some of Brisbane’s previous posts received fewer than 10 replies. Struick’s announcement had 9,000.

This is the Indonesia effect. The country in Southeast Asia has a population of more than 280 million people and football is the No. 1 sport. Cue adoration for national players and fanaticism online and offline.

To illustrate this, below are some statistics compiled by The athlete to compare Indonesia’s starting XI to the US Men’s National Team starting XI – however, we do not look at expected goals or progressive passes. We compare Instagram followers.

Indonesia’s starting XI for the World Cup qualifier against Australia had a total Instagram following of 26.9 million. The 11 clubs they play for have a combined fan base of less than 10 million on the same app.

In comparison, the USMNT’s final starting XI in the friendly against New Zealand had a combined fan base 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 XIs should highlight is the level of support for Indonesian players, for example, compared to a country of more than 335 million people that will host the men’s World Cup in 2026.

The only players in the starting lineup for Indonesia’s goalless draw with Australia who have fewer supporters than the club they play for are Rizky Ridho, who plays center back for Indonesian League 1 side Persija Jakarta, and Justin Hubner, who plays for the Wolverhampton Wanderers plays the Premier League.

The 21-year-old Hubner joined the Wolves youth team in 2020. He has yet to feature for the senior team and plays most of his games at academy level – but in the national team he is treated as if he were playing week in and week out for Real Madrid, that’s the fanfare he receives online and in person experienced.

“I can’t leave my hotel (in Indonesia) because people are waiting for me and running to me. Everywhere I go it’s crazy,” says Hubner The athlete. “If I go into a store and then leave, there might be 100 people waiting there. I’m their idol, so they wait for me, for pictures and autographs.”

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

“I had maybe 5,000 followers on Instagram, and when fans realized I had Indonesian blood, that number went up to 30,000, and now I’m at 2.7 million,” Hubner says. “When it comes to social media, everything has grown so quickly. Everything from brand offers too. There’s so much coming up for me now. It’s a dream.”

The day before the interview with The athleteHis contract was concluded with the deodorant company Rexona. “A lot of teammates here at Wolves jokingly say: ‘Can I change my national team to Indonesia?’

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

Hubner was loaned out to Japanese club Cerezo Osaka last season 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 about his quiet life in Wolverhampton. “When I come back to Europe, it’s like I’m living my own life, without stress. There is a crazy side to Indonesia. 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 with a cap and mask, but they recognized me immediately. Even the security service and the police wanted photos of me. There were 50 to 60 people there who wanted a picture. My family is also pretty famous now. I created an Instagram account for my mother and she has almost 50,000 followers. Everyone recognizes her. When she first traveled to Indonesia, she asked why people wanted photos with her.”

When fans meet Hubner, it’s not unusual for them to be overwhelmed with emotions. Some cried. His mother Brigitte has received direct messages from fans dreaming of marrying her son. The clubs try to use this star factor.

“Dallas noticed,” says goalkeeper Paes. “The club’s commitment has increased enormously. When I play for a club I want to help them as much as possible because they also help me a lot. My main focus is making sure the balls don’t go into the net, but I’m helping to build this club and raise awareness.”

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

“The exciting thing about Marselino is that he is the best young Indonesian talent,” says Thohir. “He is 20, he played and trained in Belgium.

“We need to invest in young players at Oxford. He is young but has played more than 20 times for our national team, so the Oxford coach wants to give him a chance and that is the most important thing.

“If he brings more attention to Oxford that will be added value.

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

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