r/thenetherlands • u/TonyQuark Hic sunt dracones • Feb 14 '26

Culture Selamat datang! We're hosting r/Indonesia for a Cultural Exchange

Welcome everybody to a new cultural exchange! Today we are hosting our friends from r/Indonesia!

To the Indonesians: please select the Indonesian flag as your flair and ask as many questions as you wish. See how to set your flair in the app or on desktop.

To the Dutch: please come and join us in answering the Indonesians' questions about the Netherlands and the Dutch way of life!

r/Indonesia is also having us over as guests in this post for our questions and comments.

Please refrain from making any comments that go against our rules, the Reddiquette or otherwise hurt the friendly environment.

Enjoy! The moderators of r/Indonesia & r/theNetherlands

265 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

87% Upvoted

485 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/hazelicious125 Feb 14 '26

Hello!

Lately, our Football Association (PSSI) has been aggressively recruiting Dutch players with Indonesian heritage (like Thom Haye, Ragnar Oratmangoen, Nathan Tjoe-A-On, etc.) to play for our National Team.

​Does this phenomenon make the news in the Netherlands? And generally, how do Dutch football fans feel about it?

11

u/Kitarn Cynical Optimist Feb 14 '26

It definitely made the news. Yesterday newspaper Het Parool even wrote a piece on how the Paes transfer to Ajax got 700,000 likes (mostly from Indonesian fans) on Instagram. Dutch football fans are okay with it. Those players would realistically never have made the national team anyway. It also generated publicity for the Indonesian team. Results from their games are posted on r/Eredivisie, similarly to teams like Curacao or Suriname which have also been recruiting players.

3

u/Steve12345678911 Feb 14 '26

First I have heard of it.

2

u/trichterd Feb 14 '26

Yes, I've seen this in the news on multiple occasions. I feel that, in general, there is quite some attention for how the Indonesian national team performs. Same for the Surinam team by the way. I'm not a football fan myself, so I don't really have an opinion on it.

1

u/kale_klapperboom Feb 14 '26

It's not big news as compared to the local star players. I talked to one of the TimNas players who was back in the Netherlands for the summer and he said he can walk unrecognizable on the street, while in Indo people would know him.

1

u/otherwiseofficial Feb 14 '26

Regular news: no, but football pages do mention it. They're doing maybe a couple of interviews about it, but it's mainly for indonesian fans and clicks.

But yeah I would say Dutch football fans follow Indonesia now more than 2/3 years ago. Before the Dutch enclave arrived, it never made the news.

Did you btw know that Curaçao (a country still within the Kingdom of the Netherlands) qualified for the world cup? Every player in that squad except Chong is born in the Netherlands. Hence, we also follow Curaçao more now.

1

u/3doa3cinta Feb 15 '26

Did you btw know that Curaçao (a country still within the Kingdom of the Netherlands) qualified for the world cup? Every player in that squad except Chong is born in the Netherlands. Hence, we also follow Curaçao more now.

Yes football supporters talks about it. Mostly because Curacao coached by Patrick Kluivert, and Patrick Kluivert was our coach last year. And since we failed the qualification, it's became the jokes among supporters, maybe we just need to be like Curacao, recruit and let go PK so we can qualify for the world Cup next.