President Jokowi Reviews Selection Of The U-17 National Team, Bima Sakti Is Grateful To Get Direct Attention

President Joko Widodo (Jokowi, is monitoring the selection of the U-17 Indonesian national team in Bandung. (Photo via Antara)

JAKARTA - The U-17 Indonesian national team coach, Bima Sakti is grateful for the attention shown by President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) ahead of the 2023 U-17 World Cup.

Bima Sakti revealed this because Jokowi was present at the U-17 national team selection agenda at Si Jalak Harupat Stadium, Bandung on Wednesday, July 12. During his visit, the number one person in Indonesia also gave motivation to the players who followed the selection.

To the Milky Way and Erick Thohir as the General Chairperson (Ketum) of PSSI who was also present, President Jokowi also put a serious target. Despite being formed in a short time, Jokowi hopes that the U-17 national team will be able to perform optimally and penetrate the final round.

"Alhamdulillah, the first selection in 10 cities began in Bandung and was grateful to receive attention from the President," said Bima Sakti.

With a real target set by President Jokowi for his team, Bima Sakti admitted that he was trying to give his best. For this reason, in this selection process he is not alone but also assisted by several great figures, one of whom is Indra Sjafri.

"We are also assisted by the scoring team by coach Indra (Sjafri), so we are here to give all young people born 2006-2007 to be selected for the U-17 national team to prepare for the World Cup in November," he said.

To build the best team, Bima Sakti emphasized that the players who qualify are merea who meet quality standards and meet needs. Because according to him the selection will not be easy because it will involve thousands of talented young players.

"We want to see quality. It depends on quality. It depends on the needs of our team too. And, yes, we have sent the standardization requested, we'll see how their game is," he said.

From Bandung, the selection process will be continued to other cities in Central Java, East Java, Bali, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Papua, and Sumatra. For the selection process in these 10 cities Bima was also accompanied by several former Indonesian national team players such as Rully Nere, Budi Sudarsono, Firmansyah, Indriyanto Nugroho, Firmansyah, and Firman Utina.

The 2023 U-17 World Cup will take place from November 10 to December 2, 2023. Indonesia was appointed by FIFA to host after Peru resigned due to a national disaster.