President Joko Widodo announced on Tuesday that Indonesia would demolish and rebuild the football stadium where a stampede earlier this month claimed more than 130 lives. He also promised to “completely transform” soccer in the soccer-crazed country.
After meeting with Gianni Infantino, the head of world soccer’s governing organization Fifa, the president, also known as Jokowi, spoke to reporters at the state palace.
He declared, “We will demolish the Kanjuruhan stadium in Malang and reconstruct it in accordance with Fifa standards.
The fatal stampede that occurred following a league game in Malang on October 1 has been attributed to police using tear gas inside the stadium, a Fifa-banned method of crowd control.
The president said that he and Infantino had agreed on important adjustments to the way sport was run in Indonesia.
We decided to completely revamp Indonesian soccer, he continued. “Fifa standards must be the foundation of every part of the preparation,”
After Indonesia and Fifa decided to establish a joint task group in the wake of the stadium catastrophe and as the nation gets ready to host the Under-20 World Cup next year, Jokowi and Infantino will meet.
Along with Jokowi, Infantino stated that the safety of the players and spectators in the country of Southeast Asia was Fifa’s top priority.
Over 100 million people in this country are passionate about football, the speaker declared. “We owe it to them that they are safe and comfortable while they watch a match.”
Infantino, who gave the president a red Fifa jersey with his name on it, promised to work closely with the administration to ensure that all venues complied with safety regulations and that the Under-20 World Cup went off without a hitch in 2019.
The government-formed fact-finding committee, under pressure to provide an explanation for what led to one of the deadliest stadium accidents in history, issued a report last week that found that the “excessive” and “indiscriminate” deployment of tear gas was the main cause of death.
