‘We couldn’t leave the hotel’

Maarten Paes is the starting goalkeeper for Major League Soccer team FC Dallas. Yet he can walk down a busy street in Dallas, Texas, and nobody will notice him.

That is not the case online. Or in Indonesia.

Like his team-mates in the Indonesia national team, Paes is mobbed when he visits the country and has a huge social media following, far bigger than would be expected of a player yet to trouble football’s uppermost echelons.

Paes, 26, was born in the Netherlands but became an Indonesian citizen in April and was shocked by the rapid growth of his socials — he has 1.7million followers on Instagram and 1.2m on TikTok.

“You already know before it happens because you’ve seen it happen to other players. It’s such a huge country and they are all in love with soccer,” Paes says.

The 26-year-old knew he was eligible to play for Indonesia for a couple of years but at the end of last year, the team reached out to him again. “At that time, my grandmother was declining in her health,” he says.

“She’s from there and I spoke with her a lot about it. It was a thing I could do that would make her smile at the end of her life. That was huge for me. She said, ‘I would really love if you would do that’. So she encouraged me and it was an honour to do it for her.”

After news broke that he was switching to Indonesia, his life changed. “That was when I felt I needed to get a relationship with my social media in a different way, where you can put it away for a while because it can be a little bit overwhelming,” he says. “It’s surreal that suddenly you’re getting adored by so many followers and such big crowds.”

Paes, who represented the Netherlands at youth level, played his first two games for Indonesia during the recent break. He says the goalless draw against Australia, who were 109 places above Indonesia in FIFA’s world rankings, in front of more than 70,000 fans at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium was eye-opening.

“It was like for the first time it all hit me, how big it is,” he says. “You see it on the internet, you see the numbers and you can’t really wrap your head around it. Then we couldn’t leave the hotel without security.”

Oxford United, who sit ninth in the Championship, England’s second tier, rarely generate big numbers on social media, but in August, a video they posted on Instagram hit 5.2million views.

Australian A-League side Brisbane Roar experienced a similarly curious upturn in engagement across social channels this month too. Like Oxford, Brisbane’s videos posted to Instagram are usually viewed thousands of times. Yet back-to-back videos posted to Instagram garnered 4.5million and 1.7million views for Roar.

The explanation? You’ve guessed it: the summer arrival of two Indonesian soccer superstars, in the form of the national team’s youngsters Marselino Ferdinan and Rafael Struick.

Ferdinan is a 20-year-old attacking midfielder who signed for Oxford from Belgian second-division side Deinze last month. Struick is a 21-year-old forward who joined Brisbane (owned by Indonesian conglomerate Bakrie Group) from ADO Den Haag, in Dutch football’s second tier, this month.

Neither arrived as a household name, at least in Europe or Australia, nor were they from well-known clubs.

Within days of Ferdinan joining Oxford, their follower count on Instagram grew from 83,000 to 226,000. Some of Brisbane’s previous posts received less than 10 replies. Struick’s announcement had 9,000.

This is the Indonesia effect. The country in south-east Asia has a population of more than 280million people and football is the No 1 sport. Cue adoration for national team players and fanaticism online and offline.

To illustrate the point, below are some stats compiled by The Athletic to compare Indonesia’s starting XI with the United States men’s national team’s starting XI — but we’re not looking at expected goals or progressive passing. We’re comparing Instagram followers.

Indonesia’s starting XI for their World Cup qualifier against Australia had a collective Instagram following of 26.9million. The 11 clubs they play for have a combined following of under 10m on the same app.

In comparison, USMNT’s last starting XI from their friendly against New Zealand had a combined following of only 1.4m.

That number could have been higher but Christian Pulisic, the AC Milan forward with 7.8m followers on Instagram, was on the bench.

What comparing the two starting XIs should highlight is the level of support for Indonesian players compared with, for example, a country of more than 335million people that will host the men’s World Cup in 2026.

The only players in the starting XI for Indonesia’s goalless draw with Australia who have fewer followers than the club they play for are Rizky Ridho, who plays centre-back for Indonesian Liga 1 side Persija Jakarta, and Justin Hubner, who is at Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League.

Hubner, 21, joined Wolves’ youth ranks in 2020. He has yet to feature for the senior side and plays the majority of his games at academy level — but with the national team, he is treated like he plays week in and week out for Real Madrid, such is the fanfare he experiences online and in person.

“I can’t leave my hotel (in Indonesia) because there are people waiting for me, running to me. Everywhere I go it’s crazy,” Hubner tells The Athletic. “If I go into a shop and then walk out, there will be maybe 100 people waiting. I’m their idol, so they are waiting for me, for pictures and autographs.”

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Hubner was born in the Netherlands and played alongside Xavi Simons (an Instagram star as a teenager at Barcelona, he had one million followers before he was 14 and now plays for RB Leipzig) in Dutch youth national teams. With Indonesia once a Dutch colony, a growing number of players in the national team have dual citizenship.

“I had maybe 5,000 followers on Instagram and when the fans realised I had Indonesian blood it went to 30k and now I’m at 2.7million,” says Hubner. “In terms of social media, everything has just grown so fast. Everything from brand deals too. There’s so much coming to me now. It’s a dream.”

The day before speaking to The Athletic, his deal with deodorant firm Rexona was launched. “A lot of team-mates here at Wolves say, ‘Can I change my national team to Indonesia?’, as a joke.

“But the guys here support me and are happy for me. They also want followers because it’s nice to have, but it is not about followers, the important thing is that I’m playing for the national team and what comes with it is really nice.”

Hubner went on loan to Japanese side Cerezo Osaka last season and says there were always Indonesia fans there to watch him, but when he travelled back to England following the two World Cup qualifier games against Saudi Arabia and Australia, there was no welcome party like there would have been at Jakarta airport. He returned to his apartment alone and without the need for security.

“It’s a different world,” Hubner says about his quiet life in Wolverhampton. “When I come back to Europe it is like I am living my own life, no stress. In Indonesia, there is a crazy side. You have no privacy, wherever you go there’s always people recording you, it’s nice but it is also good to get back to your own space and privacy.

“When I landed in Indonesia, I tried to hide myself with a cap and a mask but they recognised me straight away. Even the security and police wanted pictures with me. There was 50 to 60 people who wanted a picture. My family are also quite famous now. I made an Instagram account for my mum and she has nearly 50,000 followers. Everyone recognises her. The first time she went to Indonesia, she was asking why people wanted pictures with her.”

When fans meet Hubner he says it is not uncommon for them to be overawed with emotion. Some have cried. His mother, Brigitte, has received direct messages from fans who dream of marrying her son. This star factor is something clubs are trying to tap into.

“Dallas have been noticing it,” goalkeeper Paes says. “There’s been a big boost in terms of engagement for the club. If I play for a club, I like to help them as much as possible because they help me a lot too. My main focus is to keep the balls out of the net for them, but help to build this club, build awareness.”

Oxford, Ferdinan’s new club, are co-owned by Erick Thohir, an Indonesian businessman who helped restore them to the second tier after a 25-year hiatus. Thohir was also appointed head of the Football Association of Indonesia last year and is behind the drive to improve the national team, youth teams and wider football across Indonesia.

“The exciting thing about Marselino is that he is the best young Indonesian talent,” says Thohir. “He’s 20, he’s been playing and training in Belgium.

“We need to be investing in young players at Oxford. He’s young but he has played more than 20 times for our national team, so the Oxford manager wants to give him a chance, and that’s the most important thing.

“If he brings more awareness to Oxford, it is an extra value.

“We want to see an opportunity for any players who can play,” he adds. “So let’s see if Marselino can survive in Oxford because we don’t give any red carpet or VIP treatment. He has to compete.”

(Top photos: Robertus Pudyanto, Mohamed Farag, Zhizhao Wu, Noushad Thekkayil, Getty Images; design: Meech Robinson)