Southeast Asia Indonesia

PSS Announces Eduardo Perez, Causes A Stir on Social Media

Steven Danis

Football Tribe Indonesia

 

A unique and complicated situation when a club CEO secretly made a deal in the transfer window and nobody knows about it, even their social media staff and so on. That happened recently at PS Sleman, Yogyakarta’s only representative in the Indonesian top flight, the Liga 1.

“Kalau kalian tanya ke akun ini, lantas kami harus bagaimana? Dikabarin aja kagak” said the official account of PS Sleman, @PSSleman on Wednesday afternoon. The statement, in English, meaning PSS media staff have never been contacted by their club CEO, Fatih Chabanto, regarding the announcement of Eduardo Perez as the new head coach for the 2020 season. There’s clearly a serious miscommunication regarding the issue from the PSS higher-ups to the media staff.

There was no official news regarding the appointment on PSS’ official website, Twitter or Instagram accounts. The latest update it’s only the news about Danilo Fernandes who has resumed his duty as PSS assistant manager for 2020 season. While the announcement is held on a hotel in Sleman with a press-conference but there was no such hype regarding the appointment in the club’s social media.

Many Slemania, the supporters of PSS Sleman, are flooding the club’s Twitter account with negative comments that mentioned Fatih’s account too, @FatihChabanto. They feel tricked by Fatih who previously replaced Viola Kurniawati as PSS’ CEO. He’s not a new figure in Indonesian football as he was once part of the previous league operator, Badan Liga Indonesia. Fatih had also worked as a marketing committee for the PSSI Jakarta branch and as a consultant for PS Bengkulu.

Most of Slemania not only disliked the way Fatih announced Super Elja’s new coach but also the disbelief with the fact that Eduardo will be replacing fan-favourite Seto Nurdiantoro. Seto, who took PSS back to the highest tier in Indonesian football, had previously been rumoured to be the part of Shin Tae-yong’s backroom staff since the Korean’s appointment as head coach of the Indonesia national team in December. But the rumours dissipated as there might be no vacancies left for Seto in Tae-yong’s backroom staff in either the senior, U-22 or U-19 team.

Back to Eduardo’s situation, he actually had familiarity with the Indonesian football atmosphere as he previously become part of the Indonesia national team backroom staff underneath Luis Milla in 2017-2018 and also Julio Banuelos’ assistant at Persija Jakarta last season. His last campaign with Macan Kemayoran isn’t good enough as he and Banuelos left the club after only several matches. Eduardo, who was actually a goalkeeper coach, then made his way to Qatar, joining Xavi Hernandez’s backroom staff at Al-Sadd and accompanied the team during the recent FIFA Club World Cup.

There’s only one way that Eduardo can do to capture the hearts of the Slemania faithful. The management’s goal this season is to see PSS break into the top five positions on the league table and Eduardo needs to fulfill those words so there will be no hesitation from Slemania about him and of course about the club’s current CEO.