Jakarta, CNNIndonesia —
One of the candidates for the General Chairperson (Ketum) of PSSI Arif Putra Wicaksono advancing undaunted in the face of two other figures with big names, La Nyalla Mattalitti and Erick Thohir.
Arif realizes that La Nyalla and Erick are two formidable competitors for the PSSI 1 seat, however, the CEO of Ninesport, who is engaged in the marketing of sports event organizers, is ready to compete in programs.
“For opponents, maybe I’m compared to them not ‘apple to apple‘, but ‘apple to persimmon’. Too far, I see. The important thing is that I get the opportunity to talk about the program. I believe in my program because my life is football,” said Arif.
The man who once brought famous European clubs to Indonesia assessed that the PSSI vote owners had the same desire as himself, namely to advance Indonesian football.
In order to raise the potential of national football which has not been properly worked out, Arif offers a program to empower football fans at the grassroots level through people’s business credit loans.
“Ada ‘missing link‘ over there. There are millions of fans but if they don’t have money, right, it’s free. So they must be ‘watered’ first so that the bottom layer of the pyramid rises to the top,” explained Arif quoted from Antara.
“For example, a club is able to gather 100,000 supporters in a cooperative, where each person gets KUR of IDR 50 million, then KUR can distribute IDR 5 trillion. The fans also have purchasing power, the club has a ‘real’ income. In the end, it’s not just football. Only the ball is advancing, but so is Indonesia’s economy,” he continued.
This is the second time Arif has stepped forward as a candidate for general chairman of PSSI after the 2019 election when Mochamad Iriawan was elected leader of the Indonesian football federation.
Apart from Arif, La Nyalla and Erick, the other two potential candidates for the General Chair of PSSI are Doni Setiabudi and Fary Djemi Francis.
Starting today the PSSI Election Committee (KP) verifies the administrative requirements of prospective candidates before announcing the list of candidates for the Executive Committee (Exco) on January 31 for further processing until the PSSI Extraordinary Congress on February 16.
(nva/ptr)
