Wullems fired from PSM Makassar

March 28, 2001

The directors of PSM Makassar, on Tuesday (3/27), has officially released Dutchman Henk Wullems from his position as the club's technical director. This decision was taken against the former national team head coach after PSM's tragic showing at quarterfinal round of Asian Champions Cup in their hometown in Makassar.

PSM Makassar lost three games in a rom, 1-3 against Shandong Luneng of China, 1-8 against Suwon Samsung of South Korea, and 0-3 against Jubilo Iwata of Japan.

"PSM officially fired Wullems on Tuesday. We considered him unable to help PSM improve its results. We were humiliated before the home crowd, losing by large margins," PSM manager Kadir Halid said on Wednesday.

"Hank has been sacked because in the first and second round PSM won by big scores against Royal Thai Air Force from Thailand and Vietnam's Song Lam," said club's president Nurdin Halid, the brother of Kadir.

"That was done without him. I hired him to increase the team's performance but I've been very disappointed with the results. "Prior to this competition, PSM had never lost at home, neither in the Indonesian league nor in international competition. In 1996 we defeated Pohang Atoms here 1-0 but lost 4-0 in Korea."

Kadir said the decision to dismiss Wullems was made during an internal meeting of the club's management. The main reason for the dismissal was Wullems' failure to help PSM achieve better results at the quarterfinals of the Cup, held from March 21 to March 25.

Wullems, who led Indonesia to second place at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in 1997, was recruited by PSM patron Nurdin Halid in the middle of last season. He was signed to a contract that paid him a monthly salary of US$10,000, and was assisted by Syamsuddin Umar in preparing PSM for last week's event.

Another factor behind Wullems' dismissal was that many players were uncomfortable with his training methods.

"Many players complained about his training methods. I am afraid that if we retained him, he would hurt the team's performance in the Bank Mandiri league," said Nurdin.

"He doesn't have any vision or good strategy," said Nurdin, who denied his side were unable to match the three professional teams from east Asia physically.

"For PSM the physical side of things is not a problem," he said. "Most of the PSM players are small but against teams from Korea or Japan it shouldn't be a problem because we are flexible and agile. All of our problems came from problems with Willems' strategy.

"The visiting teams who played here played simple, effective football. They make it look easy. Our technical advisor did not come up with a good strategy to face this. We were playing the long ball and the PSM players are too small to play that style of football."

Nurdin said his club were looking towards South America for the Dutchman's replacement as they seek to hang on to their domestic title.

"We're looking for a Brazilian coach to replace Willems. He doesn't necessarily have to be Brazilian but we want someone who plays the Brazilian style.

"Now the target for the PSM team should be to win the championship again so we can get back into this competition again next year."

from www.sepak-bola.tv, AFC Website, The Jakarta Post