Southeast Asia’s Most Unique Clubs

Dewa United Banten (Indonesia)

Today, Dewa United proudly represents the province of Banten in Indonesia’s top flight — a symbolic shift from their early days when they were officially listed as a South Tangerang club. But things were very different when the club first came into existence in 2021.

In a country where football support and loyalty are deeply tied to geography, Dewa United broke the mold by naming their team after… an esports organization.

Yes, when brothers Jerry and Tommy Hermawan Lo founded Dewa United in February 18 2021, it wasn’t as a football club at all. Their first venture was into esports, fielding professional rosters for titles like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, Arena of Valor, Valorant, Apex Legends, FIFA (now EAFC), and eFootball.

Only a few days later did the Hermawan Lo brothers decide to expand into traditional sports. They acquired Martapura FC, rebranding it into what we now know as Dewa United FC, while also taking over Louvre Surabaya and converting it into Dewa United Basketball.

For readers unfamiliar with Indonesian football, imagine FaZe Clan buying an English club, Fnatic planting their flag in MLS, or Team Liquid suddenly owning a Serie A team — that’s how unconventional Dewa United’s entry into Indonesian football was.

UPB-MyTeam (Malaysia)

Imagine this: eleven men from completely different walks of life — office workers, students, tradesmen — all sharing a passion for football but with zero professional experience. Suddenly, they’re asked to form a team, train together, and take on opponents who play the game for a living. Then, after one match, they’re told to do it again for an entire league season.

That was the bold concept behind MyTeam, a Malaysian reality TV phenomenon conceived in 2006 by politician Khairy Jamaluddin and radio DJ Jason Lo. The show sought to assemble 22 amateur players from across Malaysia’s 13 states. After nationwide auditions, 39 hopefuls were brought to Bukit Jalil National Stadium for a final round of trials, which narrowed the pool down to the chosen 22.

The squad was then placed under the guidance of former Malaysia international Shebby Singh, whose mission was to mold them into a side capable of taking on the Malaysia national team in a one-off friendly on May 28, 2006.

Every step — from the state-wide auditions to the grueling training sessions — was broadcast to a captivated national audience. Against all odds, the concept worked. MyTeam lost just 2–1 to the national side, defying expectations and capturing the imagination of Malaysian fans.

The story didn’t end there. The team was invited to join the 2006/07 Liga Premier Malaysia, taking over the license of financially struggling Perak UPB, a club owned by United Plantations Berhad. The merger created UPB-MyTeam, with current Persib Bandung head coach Bojan Hodak taking over managerial duties from Shebby Singh. Khairy and Jason remained actively involved as club president and vice-president.

Even more remarkably, UPB-MyTeam finished second in their debut season, earning promotion to the 2007/08 Liga Super Malaysia.

But success proved difficult to sustain. Competing at the top level exposed the team’s limitations, and UPB-MyTeam finished 11th in both the 2007/08 and 2008/09 Liga Super campaigns. Financial difficulties eventually caught up with them, and the club was dissolved at the end of 2009.

Tuloy FC (Philippines)

Football fans might recall the story of KFUM Oslo — a club owned by the city’s YMCA chapter that stunned Norwegian football by finishing second in the 2023 second division before securing back-to-back eighth-place finishes in the top flight.

The story of Tuloy FC carries a similar spirit.

Tuloy FC is an extension of the Tuloy Foundation, a charitable organization based in Makati, Metro Manila. Founded in 1993 by Salesian priest Marciano “Rocky” Evangelista, the foundation is dedicated to caring for street children and marginalized youth in Metro Manila and beyond.

With education and empowerment as its central mission, Evangelista established Tuloy FC in 2001 as a platform to channel the footballing talent of street children and disadvantaged youth into something positive. Many of the club’s alumni have gone on to represent the Philippines in tournaments like the Homeless World Cup and Street Child World Cup — a testament to the foundation’s commitment to finding hidden talent and offering a path forward.

After years of grassroots development, Tuloy FC made its competitive debut in the 2023 Copa Paulino Alcantara before stepping into the Philippines Football League in 2024, where they finished 12th. The club briefly went on hiatus for the 2024/25 season but has returned for the 2025/26 campaign with a refreshed squad — many of whom come directly from the Tuloy Foundation’s programs.

Among Tuloy’s most celebrated graduates is national team player Harry Nunez. Growing up as a street child in Muntinlupa, Nunez discovered football at the age of six under Evangelista’s guidance. He climbed the Tuloy system and eventually earned his first Philippines national team cap in 2022, becoming a living example of the foundation’s mission in action.

Futera United (Thailand)

When you hear the phrases “crypto bros” and “football” in the same sentence, you might think of English clubs like Crawley Town and Real Bedford — sides that have become synonymous with the growing overlap between cryptocurrency culture and the beautiful game. Crawley Town grabbed headlines when WAGMI United, a group of crypto investors, took over the club and launched NFT collections to raise funds and engage fans globally. Real Bedford, under Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack, rebranded itself as “the Bitcoin football club,” accepting Bitcoin for tickets, merchandise, and sponsorships while charting an ambitious course up the English football pyramid.

In the bustling metropolis of Bangkok, a similar — and arguably bolder — story has unfolded. Meet Futera United, a club proudly billed as “the first NFT football team in the world.” Unlike Crawley or Bedford, where NFTs and crypto function mainly as funding mechanisms or marketing hooks, Futera United has built its entire identity around Web3. Its NFT holders don’t just support the club — they help run it. Fans vote on tactical setups, formations, and even player signings, turning football management into a global, community-driven experiment. In a Southeast Asian football landscape dominated by traditional ownership models, Futera United’s approach is nothing short of revolutionary, offering a glimpse into how technology could reshape the future of club governance in the region.

Even more remarkably, this experiment has paid off. Futera United stormed through the amateur leagues and climbed into Thailand’s semi-pro divisions by 2024. After heartbreakingly missing out on promotion in both their debut and 2025 campaigns, fate intervened. Licensing failures suffered by Ayutthaya PK meant that Futera United — who had finished third in the semi-pro league’s central region — were awarded promotion to the 2025/26 Thai League 3, the nation’s third tier and its lowest fully professional level.

Their squad for the T3 campaign underlined their ambitions, featuring some eye-catching names: former Nigeria international John Owoeri, the 2016 Allsvenskan top scorer, and Tsubasa Kawanishi, who previously starred for Albirex Niigata Singapore. And speaking of Albirex Niigata Singapore…

Sporting Afrique (Singapore)

Singapore’s top flight has long been open to welcoming foreign guest teams. Albirex Niigata Singapore — the satellite club of J.League 1 side Albirex Niigata — remains the longest-serving guest side in the Singapore Premier League, so much so that they’ve gradually localized themselves. Brunei’s DPMM FC, the league’s other long-standing guest team, opted to return to the Malaysian Super League this season.

Before Albirex and DPMM, several other foreign outfits tried their luck in Singapore. In the late 1990s, Australian sides Darwin Cubs and Perth Kangaroos were the first to take part. The modern era of the league saw Chinese club Sinchi FC enter as the first guest team with a unique policy of fielding only Chinese players — though two of their stars, Shi Jiayi and Qiu Li, later switched allegiances to represent Singapore internationally.

Other guest clubs soon followed: South Korea’s Super Reds (2007–2009), reserve teams from Liaoning FC (2007), Dalian Shide (2008), and Beijing Guoan (2010) of the Chinese Super League, and the French side Etoile FC (2010), who won the league in their debut year with a squad made up of Frenchmen and players from former French colonies. Malaysia also fielded its youth national sides, Harimau Muda A (2012) and Harimau Muda B (2014).

Among this eclectic history of foreign clubs, Sporting Afrique stands out — for both their bold ambition and their short-lived, controversial stay. The team participated for just one season, the 2006 S.League campaign. Like many other guest clubs, Sporting Afrique had a nationality-based recruitment policy, but theirs was pan-African: players hailed exclusively from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Cameroon. The hope was that some of them might impress enough to be naturalized and strengthen the Singapore national team.

However, Sporting Afrique quickly became infamous for reasons beyond the pitch. The club’s name today is often associated with disturbing allegations: players reportedly being paid just S$100 per month instead of their promised S$1,600, subsisting on a monotonous rice-and-chicken diet, crammed five or six to a room in a semi-detached house, and having little money or freedom to go out. Players also claimed they were barred from speaking to the media — though some eventually did, anonymously, with the BBC, sparking a scandal that spread like wildfire. Club president Collin Chee denied the allegations, but he admitted that running the team placed an unsustainable financial burden on his personal finances.

Despite some reforms, Sporting Afrique’s application to rejoin the league for 2007 was denied, likely due in part to the controversy surrounding them.

Even so, their brief existence left a legacy. Several of their players went on to successful careers abroad: Udo Fortune and Jacques Ngo’o became familiar names in Indonesian football throughout the 2010s, Harrison Muranda plied his trade across Vietnam, Malaysia, the Maldives, and India, while Thomas Biketi played in Nepal and Bangladesh. Of the club’s ambitious plan to naturalize African players, only one succeeded: Nigeria-born Udo Fidelis Chika, who went on to represent Singapore.

Al-Jabbar FC Cirebon (Indonesia)

We end our list back in Indonesia, with one of the most remarkable stories in the country’s football pyramid — a team of high school students taking on established clubs and ambitious upstarts in the nation’s lower leagues.

Al-Jabbar FC is the football team of Al-Jabbar Vocational School, a mechanics-focused vocational institution based in Cirebon, West Java — its spark plug logo proudly representing its technical roots. In Indonesia, a vocational diploma carries the same weight as a high school diploma, meaning this is literally a school team competing in the national football system.

While most Indonesian high schools limit themselves to inter-school tournaments, Al-Jabbar FC competes against adult semi-professional sides in the official league structure. They made waves in 2022 by winning the Liga 3 West Java Series 2 — effectively the fourth tier of Indonesian football — beating the likes of Persindra Indramayu, Persikad 1999 Depok, and city rivals PSGJ Cirebon. That triumph earned them the right to face stronger Liga 3 teams such as Persika 1951 Karawang, Persigar Garut, Persima Majalengka, and Pesik Kuningan. Their results weren’t always convincing and they flirted with relegation more than once, but considering they were just teenagers going up against grown men, their ability to hold their own was a remarkable achievement.

Club manager Retno Widodo credits the school’s unique approach to sports education for their success. Students are grouped by sporting interest — football-minded students study together, volleyball students share classes, and so on — allowing training schedules to be fully integrated with academics. In 2012, the school formalized its football extracurricular program by registering with the Indonesian FA’s West Java branch, officially founding Al-Jabbar FC.

The school also developed its own football curriculum, the Al-Jabbar Development Program, modeled on the youth systems of PSIS Semarang and Persis Solo. This ensures students receive professional-level training without sacrificing their education. Impressively, every player who has donned the Al-Jabbar shirt is either a current student or an alumnus of the school — making them the only purely high school-based club competing in the Indonesian football pyramid.