Indonesia Cancels U-20 2023 World Cup, PSSI Chairman Erick Thohir Disseminates Possible Sanctions From FIFA

PSSI Chairman Erick Thohir. (Photo: YouTube Screenshot of the Presidential Secretariat)

JAKARTA - PSSI General Chair Erick Thohir discussed the possibility of sanctions that Indonesia will receive. This follows the elimination of the host status for the 2023 U-20 World Cup.

Erick Thohir said, there are several possible sanctions that can be accepted. One of them is administrative sanctions that can be said to be light sanctions.

But for other points, the Minister of SOEs has not been able to confirm and can only hope that there will be no severe sanctions.

"For sanctions, there are also light sanctions. There are administrative sanctions or changes, I don't know yet, only the important thing is not to be very heavy," said Erick.

Erick Thohir's hope is that FIFA will not impose severe sanctions because this will clearly have an impact on the continuation of Indonesian football. Because he didn't want the incident to happen again in 2015, at which time Indonesian football was frozen by FIFA.

"We didn't expect this heaviest sanction, if we get hit we can't participate in competitions optimally in the world, both as a national team and a club. This is a setback and it has happened in 2015," he continued.

Previously, it was known that Indonesia was dropped from the host status of the 2023 U-20 World Cup. This deletion stems from the FIFA decision to cancel the drawing agenda which was supposed to be held on March 31 in Bali.

The emergence of a wave of strong resistance to the presence of the Israeli U-20 team as one of the participants sparked FIFA's move.

In order to lobby the sanctions that FIFA will determine, Erick Thohir explained that President Jokowi had also asked him to hold talks for the best possible.

"The President has instructed us to open talks with FIFA, for us to remain part of the FIFA extended family. So that it can be interpreted that the president does not want us to be isolated," he explained.