After Pouring Out Rp. 300 Billion For The RANS Cilegon FC, Raffi Ahmad Now Has The Opportunity To Become A Club Goalkeeper

JAKARTA - The name Raffi Ahmad has always been the center of attention. Previously, the country's number one presenter recognized the Cilegon FC football club and changed its name to RANS Cilegon FC.

As chairman, Raffi Ahmad, together with Rudy Salim, his partner in the acquisition of this club invested more than Rp300 billion. These costs are disbursed for the construction of clubs, including supporting infrastructure such as soccer fields in 10 cities, as well as a football academy.

RANS Entertainment and Prestige Motorcars are working together to create an international standard sports arena with a FIFA Certified field located at Pantai Indah Kapuk 2 Jakarta.

The arena with an area of 2.7 hectares is planned to be a training center for various sports, ranging from soccer field facilities, futsal courts, skateboarding arenas, badminton courts, tennis, basketball, wall climbing, to esports arenas.

The training arena, which is named RANS Prestige Sportainment, will also be equipped with a commercial zone, such as a restaurant, roof top cafe, soccer cafe and food court. RANS Prestige Sportainment will be managed to become the center of the Football School (SSB) and the RANS Cilegon FC training center.

Meanwhile, for the formation of players in the club, Raffi Ahmad wants to combine senior players and young players and will open registration and selection of players.

However, to choose which players will join the club, Raffi left it to Bambang Nurdiansyah (Banur) as head coach of RANS Cilegon FC and Hamka Hamzah as manager.

The aging Indonesian bomber, Cristian Gonzales, is confirmed to be part of the RANS Cilegon FC squad. At the age of 44 years, assigning El Loco as the club's main goalscorer is certainly impossible.

According to Banur, the presence of the man nicknamed El Loco is not only a player but also a motivator for young players. For that, the coach will still see the Uruguay-born man again whether to play or not.

Apart from Gonzales, RANS Cilegon FC is also confirmed to have hooked up Syamsir Alam, who has not appeared in the Indonesian League since 2016. Just like El Loco, Syamsir Alam will not necessarily be played in official matches.

It is known that Raffi Ahmad is a member of Celebrity FC, an amateur football club that contains public figures. After he acquired Cilegon FC, he recruited several FC Celebrity personnel. There are those who enter club management and some will become players.

Raffi Ahmad himself does not want to be behind the table taking care of the managerial side of the RANS Cilegon FC. He is said to be one of the players from this club. Nagita Slavina's husband will try out a new role as a goalkeeper for RANS Cilegon FC.

Although goalkeeping coach Yanuar Hermansyah has not confirmed Raffi Ahmad's position, the man who has studied at Persib Bandung Academy is quite open. Moreover, he has also served as a goalkeeper for Celebrity FC for a long time.

Meanwhile, football observer Anton Sanjoyo sees Raffi Ahmad's acquisition of Cilegon FC as a positive phenomenon that will bring better changes to the future of Indonesian football.

Anton suspects Raffi Ahmad used his extraordinary energy to buy a club because he was genuinely interested in developing Indonesian football by buying a League 2 club.

Because, he admitted, football does have an extraordinary appeal so that many people also buy football clubs with different goals, such as seeking popularity, and so on.

"Actually, when it comes to buying a club, as long as you have money, you could. But, what is important is that they pay attention to developing young players, developing referees, and so on?" he said.

With the disbursement of more than Rp. 300 billion for the construction of clubs including supporting infrastructure, it seems that Raffi Ahmad is not playing games. However, it still takes time to prove the results obtained by Yuni Shara's ex-lover.

It is certainly hoped that in the future there will be more young celebrities who will imitate Raffi Ahmad's steps. With their popularity, as well as their wealth, it will not be easier for them to grow their club and get sponsorships.