{"id":29455,"date":"2025-09-18T23:00:52","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/?p=29455"},"modified":"2025-09-18T23:00:52","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:00:52","slug":"indonesian-interest-rekindled-as-three-players-feature-in-afc-champions-league-elite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2025\/09\/18\/indonesian-interest-rekindled-as-three-players-feature-in-afc-champions-league-elite\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesian Interest Rekindled as Three Players Feature in AFC Champions League Elite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"255\" data-end=\"509\"><strong>An Indonesian club may have been absent from the AFC Champions League Elite proper since 2011, but interest from the archipelago remains strong this season \u2014 thanks to three Indonesian players taking part in the 2025\/26 group stage.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p data-start=\"511\" data-end=\"933\">Buriram United\u2019s Shayne Pattynama and Sandy Walsh played their part in a crucial 2-1 victory over Southeast Asian rivals Johor Darul Ta&#8217;zim on September 16. Pattynama started and impressed at wing-back across the full 90 minutes, while Walsh came off the bench in the 60th minute to help shore up the Thunder Castles\u2019 defense, picking up a late yellow card but helping seal a potentially vital result at the Chang Arena.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"935\" data-end=\"1389\">Earlier on the same day, Melbourne City\u2019s Mathew Baker \u2014 who has Batak heritage through his North Sumatran mother \u2014 was named as an unused substitute in his side\u2019s 2-0 home defeat to Japan\u2019s Sanfrecce Hiroshima. A standout in City\u2019s U-18 squad, Baker has been edging closer to senior football under Aurelio Vidmar and is expected to gain valuable experience throughout the club\u2019s continental campaign, even if first-team minutes don\u2019t come immediately.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1391\" data-end=\"1779\">Arema Indonesia remain the last Indonesian club to have reached the group stages of Asia\u2019s premier club competition back in 2011. Since then, league champions such as Persib Bandung, Bali United, and Persija Jakarta have all fallen short in the qualifiers \u2014 making the presence of Pattynama, Walsh, and Baker a source of pride for Indonesian fans eagerly following the ACLE this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Indonesian club may have been absent from the AFC Champions League Elite proper since 2011, but interest from the archipelago remains strong this season \u2014 thanks to three Indonesian players taking part in the 2025\/26 group stage. Buriram United\u2019s Shayne Pattynama and Sandy Walsh played their part in a crucial 2-1 victory over Southeast Asian rivals Johor Darul Ta&#8217;zim on September 16. Pattynama started and impressed at wing-back across the full 90 minutes, while Walsh came off the bench in the 60th minute to help shore up the Thunder Castles\u2019 defense, picking up a late yellow card but helping seal a potentially vital result at the Chang Arena. Earlier &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/2025\/09\/18\/indonesian-interest-rekindled-as-three-players-feature-in-afc-champions-league-elite\/\" class=\"tribe-more-link\">Continue reading &#8220;Indonesian Interest Rekindled as Three Players Feature in AFC Champions League Elite&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":28138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,26],"tags":[2877,926,110,220,91,3039,241,2913,2732,95,315,68],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29455"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29456,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29455\/revisions\/29456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}