KURNIAWAN: LIVE FAST, PLAY HARD

March 27, 2001

One of South East Asia’s finest strikers, Indonesian international Kurniawan Dwi Yulianto has packed a lot into his 24 years. He’s trained in Italy, played in Switzerland, led his country to the final of the Tiger Cup - and now he’s taken on the challenge of fatherhood. Michael Church reports.

 

For one so young, Kurniawan Dwi Yulianto has achieved more than most of his peers - in Indonesia, South East Asia or on the continent as a whole. At the age of just 24, he’s already been there and done that with the European thing, led his nation to the finals of the Tiger Cup and, on a less savoury note, been forced to shrug off allegations of drug use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now he has his eyes set on the Asian Club Championship quarter-finals with PSM Makassar, the South Sulawesi club that are heralding the return of Indonesian club football to the top of the Asian game.

They’re the first side from Asia’s third-largest nation to reach the last eight of the competition since Persib Bandung managed it in 1995. But while the side from East Java saw getting that far as a major achievement in itself, the ambition and desire PSM have to succeed at this level is what attracted Kurniawan to the club in the first place.

 

“When I first came to PSM I looked at the team and saw that they really wanted to be champions,” he says of the current Indonesian title-holders. “They ran the club professionally and bought some good players. They have a good coach and the condition of the club is geared towards playing and training well.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kurniawan should know all about the high standards required to be successful. He was a member of Indonesia’s highly touted Primavera squad, a group that lived and trained at Italian club Sampdoria for several seasons.

He was one of a handful selected to stay on at the club, which he did until the opportunity to further his career in Switzerland came along, Kurniawan joining FC Lucerne at the age of 19.

“In Switzerland and Italy I gained a lot of good experience,” he says. “In football in Europe, players realise that football is their way of life. They really work and play as professionals. It’s not always the same in Asia. At Sampdoria I learned how to play football the right way, how to have the right attitude as a player.

 

“When I started in Europe I didn’t have any problems settling in because I was starting with Italian standards. But the reason I left Italy was because I didn’t get a chance to make an impression on the senior team at Sampdoria. They wanted me to stay on in the junior team and I lost my self-confidence and I knew I could improve elsewhere.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sadly for Kurniawan, Lucerne didn’t work out as hoped. After a moderately successful first season in Switzerland, the physical style of football proved to be unsuitable for the slightly-built forward.

“In Italy they play as a team so they work together, but in Lucerne they played like the ambition of every player was different. The style of football was different; it was more like German football. I tried to use my speed and my movement to avoid the opposition, but it was tough.

“Playing there didn’t really change or improve my ability. It made me stronger. I worked hard to try and find what I could learn and also what I could give to the team.

“In the first year when I was playing a lot it was fine. I was given a chance to play in the starting line-up, but by the end of the second season they had four foreign players and I was on the bench. I only played for the second team and I didn’t think that was good enough for me.”

A disillusioned Kurniawan decided to leave Swiss and European football behind and return to Indonesia. That was over three years ago. He’s still there and he has no plans to go back to Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

“I went back home to rebuild my self-confidence,” he says. “I went back home but didn’t know what I wanted. I was asked to go back to Sampdoria, but I felt I wasn’t ready to go back.

“I still want to play abroad but there haven’t been any moves for me. I want to go, but only to another Asian country.”

Rumoured moves to everywhere from Malaysia to Mexico, Singapore to Seoul have all fallen flat, many because, behind the scenes, Kurniawan hasn’t had the best of publicity off the pitch.

Whispering behind hands became bare-faced accusation in the second half of last year when the Football Association of Indonesia carried out drug tests on Kurniawan and several other players to substantiate serious claims that the forward had been taking illegal drugs and supplying them to other players.

However, all the results were clear, and Kurniawan’s claims to be clean were upheld, despite a few dissenting voices.

“I don’t care about what people think. I just concentrate on playing football. I know that football can give me money for my life. I believe I can stop people from talking about these other issues if I play better.”

 

 

 

 

 

It was his new wife who backed him in his darkest hour and Kurniawan credits her with his ability to putting the issue to the back of his mind and become the top scorer in the Indonesian league last season. The birth of his daughter in August was also a calming influence.

“My wife has given me her full support throughout the whole time. She told me not to think about it, to forget it, to show my best on the pitch. She told me to show everyone that I’m a good player and that if I thought too much about this then I wouldn’t be able to play.

“Marriage has helped me. It has made me fully mature and now I have the responsibility of being a father. My daughter was born two months before the Asian Cup and it has made me change my way of thinking.”

Indonesia’s young gun is growing up fast.

from AFC website