PSSI Prepares Special Steps To Protect National Team Players From Bullying

Wxco PSSI (photo: pssi.pers)

JAKARTA - PSSI stated that it would take serious steps to protect Indonesian national team players from bullying. This is even pursued through special steps that will be implemented.

Through the statement of Exco members, it turns out that Arya Sinulingga PSSI already has a concept that will be applied to protect national team players from bullying, which has recently been widely carried out by social media activists.

"Actually, in the past two months, we already have a concept about protecting players and football players. Where it turns out to be bullying against football players, even the latest is how netizens act of racism," said Arya Sinulingga in Central Jakarta on Saturday, May 11.

Focusing on preventive efforts in terms of social media, Arya said PSSI would cooperate with various parties, including social media company Meta as the owner of Instagram and Facebook.

"We will cooperate with Meta, then TikTok, then Youtube, then Kominfo. And later the police so that later we will have rules, regulations, how to protect players," said Arya Sinulingga.

"We can make proposals to Meta, for example, or TikTok or Twitter for accounts that issue racism that can be blocked by Meta or others. This is what we do to protect our players and also to other countries," Arya added.

Efforts to prevent bullying via social media have become more of a concern for PSSI in line with the recent national team situation. Where the U-23 national team received a lot of satire and bitter comments regarding the failure of those who lost to Guinea and resulted in the loss of the chance to the Paris 2024 OLimpics.

Not only the Indonesian U-23 national team players who were attacked by Indonesian netizens. A number of Guinean players and the Guinean Football Federation (FGF) also received racist attacks through social media after defeating Indonesia in the 2024 Olympic playoffs.

Arya Sinulingga commented on this action as an embarrassing and no doubt it can be dangerous. Moreover, Arya considers this to be able to damage the image of the world of Indonesian football in the eyes of the world.

"This is quite embarrassing, because this is dangerous, it turns out that Indonesians are racist. Since when have we become racist. This is the first time this has happened. This is very bad. This must turn into something positive so that there are no such actions," he said.