Two Passports Without Indigenous Blood: Indonesia and Southeast Asia's Naturalization Race

I remember the evening of August 2026. My phone screen lit up with a notification from FIFA: Maarten Paes, a goalkeeper born in 2026 who had once worn the Netherlands U21 shirt, had been cleared for a federation transfer to Indonesia. No shouting, no fanfare, no grand press conference. Just a cold administrative line on a white background. But for Southeast Asian football, that line rang out like a long-range strike in the ninetieth minute.

Six months later, in February 2026, Ole Romeny took his oath as an Indonesian citizen. One goalkeeper, one centre-forward. The two positions with the greatest single-player leverage on a pitch. And in both cases, not a single transfer fee was paid.

I once wrote: "A goal that does not scream is worth more than a hundred minutes of shouting." This time, the silence was in a meeting room, not on a pitch. And it weighed heavier than any moment I had witnessed before.

To understand the story, we must step back into a line of history few Vietnamese pay attention to. The Dutch East Indies, from the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth, was home to hundreds of thousands of long-term European settlers. They were called "blijvers" — those who stayed. Their descendants, across generations, hold Dutch passports but retain blood ties to the land where their grandparents were born. It is a football resource that Vietnam does not have, Thailand does not have, and Malaysia barely has.

PSSI, Indonesia's football federation, turned that resource into a strategy. Not once. But as a system. And that system runs through two gates.

The first gate is Indonesian citizenship law — specifically Article 20 of Law No. 12 of 2026, which permits naturalization on grounds of "state interest" with approval from Indonesia's House of Representatives. The second gate is FIFA's regulations — specifically the Regulations Governing the Application of the FIFA Statutes — requiring a player to have a parent or grandparent born on the territory of that federation. Paes and Romeny passed both gates.

The most important point: neither gate requires indigenous blood. This is not a loophole. It is a design.

But before the legal analysis, look at the positions. In football, there are roles where a single individual can lift an entire team, and roles where even a great individual is just one link in a chain. Goalkeeper and centre-forward belong to the first group. A solid goalkeeper stabilises a back line that rarely has time to gel at international level. A centre-forward who scores changes the entire way opponents must defend, stretching their shape and opening space for the lines behind.

Indonesia did not naturalize a full-back. They naturalized the spine. That was a calculated choice, not an accident.

Paes's case is subtler than Romeny's. He had represented the Netherlands at U21 level, meaning he had already played for another federation at youth level. To switch to Indonesia, he needed a special procedure known as a change of association — a one-time switch in a career. FIFA approved it in August 2026, after a long pursuit by PSSI across several rounds of negotiation. This sits at the edge of the regulations and demands closer verification than any other case in the region.

Economically, this is a recruitment channel that costs no transfer fee. There is no "panic premium", no auction, no agent inflating a price. But the real cost lies elsewhere: administrative cost, legal cost, and the cost of trust.

And here is what most reports miss: this supply is finite and non-renewable. Once the generation of "blijver" descendants is exhausted, Indonesia will have nothing left to import. It is a strategy with an expiry date. One day they must return to academies, to youth development, to slower but more durable things.

For Vietnam, the signal is worth pondering. We have an overseas Vietnamese community, but not a colonial-settler class of hundreds of thousands of European-descended people carrying indigenous blood ties. We cannot copy the model. We can only compete another way: youth development, a playing philosophy, cohesion.

But now is the time to speak plainly. The "legal loophole" narrative that Indonesian media is pushing is a mis-framing. Article 20 of Law 12/2026 is deliberate legislation. The grandparent-birthplace criterion has been a FIFA rule for years, not a new hole. These two players are fully eligible.

Calling them "without indigenous blood" is biologically accurate but legally irrelevant — because the law does not care about indigenous blood, it cares about where the ancestors were born. This is what I always tell my colleagues in Marseille when they ask about Asian football: do not confuse what is legal with what is popular. The two are different.

Paes and Romeny are legal. But they are not necessarily loved by a segment of Indonesian fans. And when a player must carry an entire policy on his shoulders, the risk is enormous.

If Paes makes a mistake in a World Cup qualifier, people will not say "Paes made a mistake". They will say "the naturalization policy failed". If Romeny goes three games without a goal, people will not say "Romeny is out of form". They will say "the naturalized player is not worthy". That is a burden no player should carry.

There is one more dimension I want to address: the regional race. The Philippines has long taken a similar path with mixed-heritage players. Malaysia is edging in that direction. When several nations run the same road, any one nation's advantage is eroded. Indonesia leads, but leads in a race whose finish line FIFA can move at any moment.

If the naturalization wave widens, pressure on FIFA to tighten the grandparent-birthplace criterion will grow. That is a systemic risk no federation can control. A decision in Zurich can nullify a plan drawn up in Jakarta over years.

I have covered eight World Cups and eight Olympic Games. I have seen national teams buy a generation and lose a generation. I have seen federations bet on passports instead of academies. Indonesia's story is not new. But it is closer to us than ever.

The question is not whether Indonesia is permitted to do this. They are. The question is what remains once the "blijver" list runs dry. A national team built on a supply that can run out, or a football culture built on a foundation that can grow.

I thought I was writing about goals — it turns out what I was chasing were real people.

And this is the question I leave for myself, and for those who run Vietnamese football: when our neighbours choose the path of import, do we have the patience to keep walking the path of cultivation?

An empty stadium, seat 12A still vacant — the ball did not roll, but time scored on its own.