Four Years After Kanjuruhan: The Wound Indonesian Football Archives and Walks Out With

There is a file lying in the right corner of my desk — Kanjuruhan. Inside it, a photograph dated 1 October 2026, and below it one line in my own handwriting: people standing outside the gate, the stadium silent inside. For four years the file stayed shut. I opened it again today, because FIFA President Gianni Infantino has sent a message to Indonesia's football family — a grieving tone, and with it a promise: Indonesian football will be made safe, and that is one of the pillars of the transformation journey. The report comes from VIVA, a mainstream Indonesian news outlet. I have been writing about the game for more than forty years. My experience tells me that when a condolence message becomes news, it is no longer just emotion — it is a policy question. And across four decades I have dusted off many tapes and played them; but when it comes to the Kanjuruhan tape, my hand still shakes. What happened that night? A Liga 1 match, Arema FC against Persebaya Surabaya — one of Indonesia's most heated derbies, the so-called Derby Jatim, the East Java rivalry. The match ended. What followed was not football; it was a failure of crowd management. Riots in the stands, police tear gas, and a crush at the exit gates — 135 dead, more than a hundred injured. Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) then investigated and concluded: this was not a mere accident; excessive force was used, and match-safety governance was deficient. The charge no longer stopped at crowd pressure; it rose to the level of institutional responsibility. I still remember that night. I was in Sylhet, awake late watching the match on a screen. The scoreline was an ordinary Liga 1 result; hours later that scoreline was erased under a death toll. Then, in November 2026, when I travelled to Qatar and wrote about the rise of young Enzo Fernández, the image of Kanjuruhan was still turning at the back of my head — where football is a festival, how can the same football become a graveyard. This is where the real analysis begins. Watching matches for four decades, I have understood one thing: in football a catastrophe is never a single night's event; it is the accumulation of many days of neglect. Kanjuruhan is the same. The result is secondary here; the central question is safety governance. And in that question the biggest trigger point is tear gas. International stadium-safety regulations sharply restrict the use of tear gas inside or around stadiums. The reason is simple: when gas spreads, people panic, and a panicked crowd forgets its own exit route. That is exactly what happened. The second layer is economic, but not club economics directly. One sentence in Infantino's message matters — FIFA is investing in Indonesian infrastructure, grassroots and player development through its FIFA Forward programme and other initiatives. This is not a club balance-sheet story; it is a promise to build the foundation of a system. To my eye this is the real transmission path: grassroots, then clubs and Liga 1, then FIFA Forward investment and the national team. If that pipeline works, safety reform and capital will together raise the structural floor. An academy is not a factory; an academy is a dig site — and the best mineral is still lying in the dirt. The third layer is governance architecture. The message speaks of cooperation between three parties — FIFA, PSSI and the Indonesian government. Infantino also named PSSI chairman Erick Thohir. This cooperation brings stability in one sense, because reform does not depend on a single individual. But there is another side that many skip: when the association and the state sit at the same table, the boundary of independent oversight risks becoming blurred. In football governance rules this is a recognised tension. And one thing tactics analysts often skip: the fixture type itself is a safety variable. Staging a derby as intense as Arema versus Persebaya demands a tough security plan alongside it. So the question is not who won; the question is who took responsibility. The fourth layer is the market. After a disaster like this, sponsors and broadcast partners may attach image-related clauses to Indonesian football assets; in the short term that is risk, and if safety reform succeeds, in the medium term the same thing can return as added confidence. Now let me say something uncomfortable, because a journalist's doubt must exist even inside a condolence message. Institutional statements around an anniversary are often a blend of grief-acknowledgement and reputational management. Infantino's message was probably coordinated with PSSI's communications department — meaning this is not an independent assessment, it is a joint narrative. Second, nowhere does it say that any sanction, prosecution or regulatory fine has been imposed on those responsible. That accountability vacuum is the biggest gap. Third, the message contains no measurable reform milestone — no timeline, no indicator. My experience tells me that where there is no indicator, promises gather dust easily. And this is where the inverted risk hides. For a young player the risk is excessive hype; for this message the risk is promise-not-delivered. If reform stalls, the same message will return every year and stand as an indictment of FIFA and PSSI. There is a page in the empty stadium diary where the silence learned my name — and that silence is still demanding justice four years on. So what do I watch next? Three things. One, whether a formal, binding safety-compliance roadmap appears between FIFA and PSSI. Two, whether FIFA Forward money is released in tranches, and whether safety conditions are attached to it. Three, whether any trial or sanction follows from the Komnas HAM recommendations. Kanjuruhan has not forgotten; Indonesian football is learning to archive the wound and walk out the other side. The question is only this — are those sending messages taking photographs, or redrawing the exit gates?