‘All guns blazing’: 80,000 Indonesians await as Socceroos seek salvation in Jakarta

Usually it takes a rockstar or a president to fill the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta, but it’s about to hit capacity for the second time in five days. Last week, Pope Francis delivered mass at Indonesia’s national stadium, and on Tuesday night, Graham Arnold and his Socceroos will seek salvation on the same hallowed turf.

Indonesia is regarded as one of world football’s sleeping giants, a huge nation of over 280 million people whose progress in the beautiful game has long been hampered by decades of governance issues, corruption and match-fixing allegations, investment and infrastructure problems and tragic instances of fan violence.

Indonesia’s coach Shin Tae-yong - a one-time A-League import with Brisbane Roar - is thrown into the air after a World Cup qualifying match against the Philippines earlier this year.Credit: Getty

But there are signs that, at long last, they are moving in the right direction – which could spell trouble for the Socceroos in the immediate term.

At the Asian Cup earlier this year, Tim Garuda (Team Garuda) reached the knockout phase for the first time. And while they haven’t made the World Cup since 1938 – when they competed as the Dutch East Indies – qualification feels as close as it’s ever been, thanks to the 2026 tournament’s expansion to 48 teams.

Hours after the Socceroos slumped to a 1-0 defeat to Bahrain on Thursday night, just their second loss in a live World Cup qualifier at home since 1981, Indonesia held the Roberto Mancini-coached Saudi Arabia to a 1-1 draw in Jeddah, one of the biggest results in their history.

They did it with a better XI than what might be imagined from the world’s No. 133-ranked team. Thanks partly to a renewed push by the Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI) to find diaspora players around the planet, among their starters were four players drawn from the Dutch Eredivisie, two from Belgium’s top flight, and one each from Italy’s Serie A, England’s Championship and Major League Soccer in the United States - not too dissimilar a mix to the Socceroos.

Harry Souttar scores Australia’s fourth goal against Indonesia at the Asian Cup.Credit: Getty

The rest of the country has sat up and taken notice, according to Robbie Gaspar, a former National Soccer League player who carved out a strong career as a player in Indonesia.

“Everyone’s talking about the national team,” says Gaspar, who these days is a sports diplomat and president of the Indonesia Institute think tank. Based in Perth, he has flown into Jakarta for the match. “Everyone’s getting behind them. They’re seeing that they’re moving forward, they’re getting better.”

Tuesday’s showdown with their southern neighbours will indeed be an all-time occasion for the Indonesian game, and arguably the biggest match Tim Garuda has played given the World Cup stakes. Originally slated to be held in Surabaya because of the clash with Pope’s visit, it was moved back to the national team’s traditional home venue in Jakarta to help cater for fan demand, and a crowd of almost 80,000 will be there, trying to dig inside the Socceroos’ heads, encouraged by both teams’ most recent results.

Gaspar’s concern is that precious few of the Indonesian players have big-game experience like the Socceroos. “They’re going to come out all guns blazing,” Gaspar says. “They’re going to take the game to Australia, play at a really high tempo, the crowd’s going to be pushing them forward to score. If we can ride out that for 15 or 20 minutes and settle the game down, and then we’ll be OK.”

Alessandro Circati was one of Australia’s best against Bahrain, in an unfamiliar role at right-back.Credit: Getty Images

Socceroos defender Alessandro Circati saw the friendlier side of Indonesia football fandom over the weekend as some local fans of his Italian Serie A club Parma came hunting for selfies and autographs. His last club match was at Napoli’s famed Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, so he will not be intimidated by what awaits.

“I don’t think it’s hostile,” Circati says. “I think it should be energy to fuel your fire. It pumps me up. Makes me want to win a bit more.”

Not a single player in the current squad was alive the last time Australia conceded a goal against Indonesia. Indeed, defeat seems unlikely for the Socceroos, who were relatively untroubled in a 4-0 victory over them eight months ago at the Asian Cup, the last time they met. But defeat seemed unlikely to Bahrain, too. Pressure does funny things to teams, and there is an awful lot of it now on Arnold, a manager under fire after Australia got just four shots on target from 70 per cent of possession on the Gold Coast - an all too familiar story for the national team during his reign.

Indonesia is expected to deploy similar tactics to Bahrain: sit back and defend in numbers, make the Socceroos feel frustrated, and then use the energy of the crowd and the pace of their forwards to spring forward on the counter-attack. The question will be if they can rise above it this time.

If they can’t, and Japan and Saudi Arabia win their matches, Australia could be as many as five points adrift of the direct qualification berths in Group C.

“It’s a new game, it’s a different game. We have to go in with a free head,” Circati said.

“I’d like to think this game we can be a bit more creative, a bit more brave offensively, and maybe take half a risk to possibly get the half opportunity for a goal. We do have creative players, so we’re able to do that. We’ve just got to flick the switch to give them the confidence to take that half-risk, take that risk, to take a player on, take two players on, to possibly get an opportunity on goal.”