Indonesia Naturalizes Paes and Romeny: ASEAN's Race Shifts to Passports

A February night in Hamburg, cold enough that breath froze into mist on the window pane. I sat in front of the screen and paused at minute 78 of Indonesia's World Cup 2026 qualifier against Saudi Arabia. A 1.92-metre goalkeeper with unmistakably Dutch features was spreading his arms to adjust the Indonesian back line before a corner. His name is Maarten Paes, born in 2026 in Nijmegen, a former Netherlands U21 keeper, and now keeping clean sheets for a country he has never lived in for more than a few months.

I rewound the clip three times. Not to watch him catch the ball. But to watch how he spoke to the four defenders in front of him, in broken English mixed with hastily learned Indonesian. There was a moment when an Indonesian centre-back turned to look at Paes as if waiting for orders, and Paes pointed to the left flank. Their languages were different. Their instincts were the same.

There are numbers that only tell the truth at midnight. And what is telling the truth in Southeast Asia right now is this: Indonesia has completed at least five naturalisation deals in two years, among them the two most conspicuous names — Maarten Paes and Ole Romeny. Neither has a single drop of indigenous Indonesian blood. Both fully legal. Both quietly shifting the balance of power in regional football.

A data man like me usually looks at both sides of every table. Tonight I want to look at a different side: the legal one. Because the story of Paes and Romeny is not a story about goals. It is a story about passports.

Context: a federation changes strategy

To understand why these two names matter, some context. Indonesian football has spent more than two decades in the shadow of Thailand and Vietnam regionally. It has the largest population in Southeast Asia, a domestic league with some of the most fervent attendances in Asia, yet its national team kept collapsing in big matches. While Vietnam won the 2026 AFF Cup and reached the third round of 2026 World Cup qualifying, Indonesia could not even escape the group stage of the 2026 AFF Cup.

Then PSSI — the Indonesian football federation — changed strategy. Not the coach. Not an academy. The supply of players.

They began to search for Indonesians abroad. Not Indonesian migrants. The descendants of Dutch people who once lived in the Dutch East Indies — the former Dutch colony on the territory now forming Indonesia — and who left or stayed after Indonesian independence in 2026. These people carry a specific name: "blijvers" — those who remained.

Indonesian Citizenship Law No. 12 of 2026, Article 20, permits naturalisation on grounds of "state interest" with the approval of the DPR, Indonesia's House of Representatives. No birth on Indonesian soil required. No Indonesian language required. Only a biological grandparent born on what is now Indonesian territory. That is the pivotal point.

You see the issue. This is not a legal loophole. It is a door designed on purpose.

There is a striking historical coincidence here. The Dutch-East Indies community is not small. After 2026, when Indonesia won independence, roughly 300,000 people of mixed European-Asian descent migrated to the Netherlands. Their descendants today number in the hundreds of thousands, concentrated in cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and especially the eastern Netherlands — home to the largest East Indies community. Many of them played football from childhood in the Dutch system. It is a talent reserve no ASEAN nation can match.

Maarten Paes: the goalkeeper and the complicated file

Maarten Paes was born in 2026. He keeps goal for FC Dallas in MLS after leaving Groningen in the Netherlands. In 2026, Paes was called up to the Netherlands U21 side — at 22, an unusual age for Dutch football. That means he had represented the Netherlands at youth international level. To switch to Indonesia, he had to pass through a procedure called "change of association", approved by FIFA.

In April 2026, Paes took the Indonesian citizenship oath. In August 2026, FIFA approved his federation transfer. PSSI had pursued the file "persistently" for months, according to Kompas, one of Indonesia's leading dailies. No transfer fee was paid. But the legal cost and the political cost were not small.

Now look at the position. Paes is a goalkeeper. In football, the goalkeeper is the position with the greatest leverage on results — one man can turn a defeat into a draw, a draw into a win. But it is also the hardest position to integrate, because a keeper must read his defenders, anticipate their steps, and speak the same language in the shortest moments.

A goalkeeper with no Indonesian blood, who does not speak Indonesian, arriving from the American league, can only communicate with his back line in broken English. That is a tactical bet no PPDA metric can measure.

But this is the point I want to press: PSSI did not choose Paes because he is the best. They chose Paes because he was the easiest to naturalise among the goalkeepers good enough. Dutch-East Indies blood. A European passport to renounce. A career not so elite that the Netherlands would fight to keep him. It was a choice based on legal feasibility, not absolute quality.

And I think the same holds for Ole Romeny.

Ole Romeny: the striker and a bet on the quality floor

Ole Romeny was born on 5 August 2026 in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is a striker who played for NEC, Willem II, then moved to FC Utrecht. Romeny has had a modest Eredivisie career — no star, but enough to be called into Dutch youth sides. In February 2026, Romeny took the Indonesian citizenship oath. He became the newest naturalised striker for the Indonesian national team.

A striker. The position with the second-greatest leverage after goalkeeper. And also the position Indonesia lacked most severely for years. Indonesia has had good domestic forwards, but none reaching international class. Romeny may not be Haaland. But he has something Indonesian forwards do not: European football experience from childhood.

This is the core logic to hold on to: Indonesia is not naturalising for stars. It is naturalising to raise the quality floor. Paes and Romeny are not world-class names. But they are competent European players, and the competent European level still sits above the ASEAN peak for most of the cycle.

Look again at the FIFA rankings to grasp this. A player who has played in the Eredivisie, even as a backup option, was still trained inside a system of higher intensity than the V.League or Thai League. He may not score 20 goals a season. But he knows how to move inside the box, how to hold the ball under pressure, how to finish with one touch — things Southeast Asian football usually has to teach from scratch.

Put another way: Indonesia is buying training time it does not have.

And here is a tactically important detail. Both Paes and Romeny play in axial positions — goalkeeper and central striker. Those are the two positions where a single player can change a result most directly. A good full-back can upgrade an attack, but a good keeper can save three points, and a good striker can win three points. If PSSI wanted to maximise the return on each naturalisation, they picked exactly the right two slots.

The legal framework: two gates, one door designed

There are two gates Paes and Romeny had to pass to wear the Indonesian shirt. The first is Indonesian law. The second is FIFA law.

Gate one: Citizenship Law No. 12 of 2026, Article 20. It permits naturalisation for state interest through DPR approval. No birthplace requirement. No residency requirement. Only political consent. Both Paes and Romeny took their oaths before the DPR — a symbolically important ritual, because it converts a naturalisation decision from an administrative act into a political one.

Gate two: the FIFA Regulations Governing the Application of the FIFA Statutes (RGAS). This text defines the conditions under which a player may represent a national federation. The key point: RGAS allows a player to represent a federation where a biological parent or grandparent was born on that territory. No indigenous blood required. Only biological geography.

And this is where the Indonesian press is misreading — or choosing to misread. They use the phrase "legal loophole" to describe the Paes and Romeny cases. But it is not a loophole. It is a designed criterion. FIFA deliberately permits this to protect nations with large historical migration — France, Germany, Italy, and yes, Indonesia too. If this were a loophole, France won the 2026 World Cup through a loophole.

The legal crux: eligibility does not equal indigenous identity. FIFA distinguishes the two concepts. And Indonesia is exploiting that distinction entirely lawfully.

Paes had the harder FIFA gate, because he had represented Netherlands U21. That means he had to complete the "change of association" procedure — allowed only once in a career. FIFA approved it in August 2026. This is a key technical detail: a player who has worn a youth national shirt can still switch federations if he has never played a senior official match. Paes never played for the Dutch senior team. That is why his door was still open.

There is another detail few mention: Indonesia enforces single nationality. A naturalised Indonesian player must renounce his original citizenship. That means Paes had to give up his Dutch passport, and so did Romeny. That is no small decision for a 25-year-old. Renouncing a European passport means giving up the freedom to move, work, and live in Europe in the future — unless Indonesia permits dual nationality. It is a legal and emotional detail Indonesian media usually skips, but it says a great deal about a player's level of commitment.

Regional comparison: the race is not on the pitch

Now place this story in a wider frame. Southeast Asia has a new race, and it is not being run on grass.

The Philippines was a decade ahead of Indonesia in naturalising foreign players. It has names like Phil Younghusband, and more recently Europe-born players of Philippine descent. Malaysia is testing a similar model with overseas Malaysian-heritage players. Thailand has a few scattered cases.

But Indonesia is the first ASEAN nation to do this systematically, with a supply that deep. The Dutch East Indies is a large community — hundreds of thousands of Dutch-East Indies descendants live in the Netherlands today, many with grandparents born on what is now Indonesian territory. It is a demographic gold mine no ASEAN nation can match.

Vietnam is different. The Vietnamese diaspora mostly went to France, the United States, Australia, and Canada after 2026 — and their descendants pursue professional football less often than the Dutch-East Indies community. On top of that, Vietnamese citizenship law is far stricter, and the VFF has no precedent for building a large-scale naturalisation programme.

Which means: if Indonesia continues down this road, it may reach a level Vietnamese football cannot touch through domestic development in the short term.

And here is what I want you to think through with me: this race is structurally unfair. Indonesia is not better than Vietnam at developing players. It simply has a historical resource Vietnam does not — and it is mining it.

From Hamburg, where I have lived for years, I understand one thing clearly: the Dutch-East Indies community is tightly knit and has a strong sporting tradition. Many still keep in touch with Indonesia through associations, through food, through family memory. When PSSI knocks, they are not total strangers. They are people whose grandparents were born somewhere they have never visited, but heard about at family dinners.

That is a catalyst Vietnam does not have. And it is part of why I think this race will not end soon.

The downside: when a model can also collapse

But I am not a man easily swept up by "Indonesia rising" stories. I have watched too many models collapse. So tonight, I want to talk about the other side.

First: that mine is not infinite. It is finite. The Dutch-East Indies community has a specific population, born in a specific window, with specific origins. Every player Indonesia naturalises drains it a little. In ten years, the number of eligible players will shrink sharply, and Indonesia will have to return to domestic development — the road it is temporarily skipping.

In other words: Indonesia is borrowing time. And it will pay interest.

Second: the substitution effect on domestic players. When Paes is the No.1 keeper and Romeny the No.1 striker, a young Indonesian keeper and a young Indonesian striker lose the chance to play at the highest level. In the short term, the team is stronger. In the long term, the domestic pipeline can clog.

I have seen this at club level. When a club buys players instead of developing them, it wins for two seasons, then collapses in the third when the money runs out and the academy has died. National football behaves the same way.

Third: the reputational weight on two shoulders. Paes and Romeny are not just two players. They are the symbol of a policy. If Paes errs in a big match, the press will not write "Paes erred". It will write "the naturalisation policy failed". That pressure is invisible but real.

I know this from my own experience. In 2026, when my betting model collapsed because of empty stadiums, I learned that a variable removed from a model can drag the whole model down. People are the same. A player carrying an entire policy on his shoulders plays heavier football.

And fourth: the naturalisation race can trigger a rule change. If Indonesia succeeds, others will respond. They may naturalise too. Or they may lobby FIFA to tighten the grandparent-birthplace criterion. That is a systemic risk no federation controls.

An empty stadium is a variable no model anticipates. A FIFA rule change is the same.

The 2026 World Cup taught me that data can be savoured like a beautiful match. But it also taught me that data can be misread. If you look only at Indonesia naturalising Paes and Romeny, you might think they have found the winning formula. Look at the structure of that formula, and you will see an expiry date.

Looking ahead: what should Vietnam see?

So what should Vietnam see when it looks at Indonesia?

Not a frightening rival. A rival choosing a different road. Indonesia is choosing speed. Vietnam is choosing durability. Both roads have a price.

The important thing is that Vietnam must understand this race is not only played on the pitch. It is played in law offices, in embassies, in PSSI meetings and in files sent to FIFA. Modern football is decided partly there, not only in the penalty box.

Probability is not for believing. It is for sleeping beside. And if I must sleep beside one probability tonight, it is that within three to five years the Indonesian national team will have a spine strong enough to beat Vietnam in a competitive match, not by luck, but by quality.

But that probability comes with a condition: Indonesia must keep the supply. And that supply is draining deal by deal.

Data is a temple, and I am only the one sweeping the leaves. But sometimes the sweeper sees what worshippers do not. Tonight, I see a door opening. And I see it closing — not because anyone closes it, but because time will.

The real question for Vietnamese football is not "how do we stop Indonesia naturalising". The question is: "while that door is still open, what will we build?"