Cutting 5 Persib Players: Herdman and the Gamble to Rebuild Indonesia's Spine Before the ASEAN Cup 2026

I received the message at 5am London time, from an agent I have known since the 2026 World Cup. He wrote exactly three sentences: "Herdman cut 14 players. Persib lost 5. Read it." No exclamation mark, no emotion. People who have been in this business long enough tend to break bad news this way — they let the numbers speak for them. I sat up in my flat in East London, opened my laptop, and spent the next twenty minutes reading and re-reading Indonesia's squad for the FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026. In the summer of 2026, I had no recorder, only a blog and audacity. But I still hold to one principle: in football, a national squad list is never just a list. It is a power map, a profit-and-loss statement for an entire footballing nation. At first glance, that list looks like a revolution. Fourteen players who featured at the AFF Cup 2026 have been cut. Five of them from Persib Bandung — the club hit hardest in the entire Liga 1. Sandy Walsh is injured and cannot feature. Marc Klok, the former captain, no longer has a place. On the other side, Persija Jakarta contributes six names, the most of any domestic club. And above all of them, a wave of Indonesia-heritage players returns from Europe: Maarten Paes, Emil Audero, Kevin Diks, Elkan Baggott, Justin Hubner, Nathan Tjoe-A-On, Dean James, Ole Romeny, Luke Vickery. Squad reshuffles before major tournaments have happened before in Southeast Asia. But the scale this time is different. And so is the way it has unfolded. To understand why a coach dares to cut fourteen players at once, you have to look at the last three years of Indonesian football. John Herdman arrived from Canada after the 2026 World Cup, where he had led the Canada women's team to Olympic gold at Tokyo 2026 and taken the men's team to their first World Cup in thirty-six years. When PSSI brought him in, the mandate was not "win the AFF Cup" but "take Indonesia into the FIFA top 100 and build a new cycle." Long-term objectives, like all long-term objectives, demand short-term decisions that hurt. PSSI has pursued naturalisation for years. Jordi Amat, Marc Klok, Sandy Walsh, Shayne Pattynama were familiar names along that path. But the new wave is a different tier. Maarten Paes starts in MLS for FC Dallas. Emil Audero has worn the shirts of Juventus and Sampdoria in Serie A. Kevin Diks plays for Copenhagen — a club regularly competing in the Champions League. Elkan Baggott, Justin Hubner, Nathan Tjoe-A-On, Dean James, Ole Romeny — all of them ply their trade in European leagues from the second tier upward. What does this mean? Indonesia is shifting from a model of "adding a few naturalised players" to a model of "importing the entire spine of the squad." This is an inversion of the talent supply chain. For two decades, Southeast Asia generally and Indonesia specifically have been seen as a lowland for player exports — where young talents go to Europe, Japan, and South Korea in search of opportunity. Now the flow has reversed: Europe produces, Indonesia imports, and the national team is where that flow converges. Kaliningrad was not just a match — it was where I saw this profession with my heart. I still remember that feeling every time I see a wave of players migrating back to their national teams. It is not like a transfer deal. It is like a calculated homecoming. Persib Bandung paid the highest price. Five of their names were crossed out — among them pillars who had helped Indonesia march deep at the AFF Cup 2026. Marc Klok, the former captain, was one of them. At thirty-two, Klok is no longer the first choice, but he remains an icon in Bandung. Crossing his name out is a clear message: there is no room for reputation, only for quality and readiness. At the same time, Sandy Walsh was confirmed injured. This is a special case — Herdman can argue he did not cut him but was forced to. But for those left at Persib, the difference between a sporting reason and a medical reason does not matter. They lost people. And when a club loses five players in one international window, the questions in Bandung are not only "why" but "how long until we get them back." If you look closely at the list Herdman chose, a clear pattern emerges: he is not patching here and there, he is rebuilding the spine. The three most important lines of a team — goalkeeper, centre-back, central midfield — have been almost entirely overhauled. In goal, the shift is the clearest. Previously Indonesia's goal was mainly guarded by domestic goalkeepers from Liga 1. Now Maarten Paes and Emil Audero appear. Paes starts in MLS, a league with intensity and physical demands far higher than Liga 1. Audero was trained at Juventus and played for Sampdoria in Serie A. Nadeo Argawinata is retained as an experienced back-up. This is a systematic upgrade, not a random substitution. The tactical implications run deeper than many realise. A goalkeeper comfortable with the ball at his feet allows a team to push its defensive line higher and build out from the back with confidence. In Southeast Asian football, high pressing is not a common weapon, but when facing Vietnam or Thailand — sides capable of pressing — a passive goalkeeper becomes a fatal weakness. Bringing in two goalkeepers comfortable with the ball is a signal that Herdman wants his team to control matches from their own half. In central defence, Kevin Diks, Elkan Baggott, Justin Hubner, Nathan Tjoe-A-On and Dean James form an entirely new collective. Previously, Indonesia's back line revolved around domestic centre-backs with Liga 1 experience. Now they have players who have faced European strikers at club level. The difference is not simply pace or strength — it is the ability to read the game and decide in a split second, things that are only forged over hundreds of matches in harsher environments. More tellingly, Herdman still retains some familiar faces. Rizky Ridho, Dony Tri Pamungkas, Jordi Amat, Nadeo — four Persija men. They are players already familiar with Herdman's system from the AFF Cup 2026, accustomed to the movement patterns, the defensive shape, the combinations with teammates. Keeping them is a calculated decision: Herdman needs a continuous spine so that the newcomers can integrate, rather than throwing everyone into a brand-new collective. In midfield, the change is more philosophical. Thom Haye, Joey Pelupessy, Calvin Verdonk appear, replacing Marc Klok and Eliano Reijnders. This is a shift from ball-controlling, short-passing midfielders playing to the rhythm of Liga 1, toward midfielders with more physicality, higher tackling intensity and faster transition speed. Indonesia's historical record against ASEAN sides shows their chronic weakness is being overrun in the middle of the park during transitions. Herdman has clearly identified that problem and is addressing it at the root. Interestingly, even with fourteen changes, Herdman keeps some young names. Luke Vickery, a rising talent, is called up. This is a sign that he is not only building for the ASEAN Cup 2026 but also for the next cycle — the 2030 World Cup, perhaps. A coach who cuts fourteen players yet retains an unproven youngster is a coach looking beyond the tournament in front of him. Looking into the players' eyes before the final training session, I knew this deal was more than a number. That is the feeling I get whenever I witness a team undergo a transfusion. Some players walk into the room knowing they have no place left. Others walk in knowing this is the chance of a lifetime. In the same room, two destinies head in two directions. But this is where the official story begins to show cracks. Indonesian media — and most Southeast Asian media — are selling a simple narrative: Herdman cut domestic players to bring in foreign-based players because the quality is higher. That narrative sounds reasonable, but it ignores three uncomfortable truths. First, there is no performance data proving the new squad is stronger than the old one. No xG, no PPDA, no possession numbers. This is a selection event, not a results event. Every claim of "quality upgrade" rests only on players' club CVs, and a club CV does not guarantee effectiveness at national-team level. We have seen far too many players excel at club level but fail at international level, and vice versa. Heat maps, individual performance indices, the rankings media love to cite — all of them are fortune-telling tools if they are not placed in the context of a specific tactical system. Second, the biggest risk of a squad with fourteen changes is cohesion. A new squad may be stronger individually, but for eleven men to play as one block takes time — time Herdman does not have before the FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026. This is the core contradiction of the decision: the more new players, the higher the individual quality, but the less time they have to understand each other. If Indonesia crash out in the group stage, the question "why cut the old squad" will no longer be an analytical question — it will be an impeachment hearing. Third, and this is the point I consider most important: the naturalisation strategy is creating a two-tier ecosystem in Indonesian football. Clubs whose players are called up — like Persija — preserve prestige and commercial value. Clubs whose players were cut — Persib, Bali United, Dewa United — lose a marketing asset. Their players no longer appear on national television, no longer get marketed as "national team players." This is a soft loss, invisible on the balance sheet, but it exists. And it will leave a mark on how clubs negotiate with sponsors, on how they price their players in the domestic transfer market. There is an underlying story no one wants to say out loud. The naturalisation strategy requires an ecosystem of agents, legal advisers, and documentation handlers — hidden costs that are never disclosed. As the number of naturalised players grows, so does the number of such transactions. There is an intermediary class benefiting from every naturalisation wave, and no one is counting them. I am not saying this to criticise. I am saying it because I have witnessed similar deals in Europe, and I know hidden costs always exist, even when they do not appear in any newspaper. Legal risk is also worth discussing. Every naturalised player must clear FIFA's eligibility checks. This is usually handled before call-ups, but nothing is absolutely guaranteed. If a player's eligibility is questioned, Indonesia can lose him at the last minute. This is a latent risk, not an ongoing problem, but it exists and it is not being mentioned by the media. There is one more detail I noticed. In the same report, Indonesian media referred to this tournament by two different names — "AFF Cup 2026" and "FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026." The confusion over the competition's name could simply be an editing error. But it could also reflect something larger: a structural change in the tournament, in its commercial control, in the position of Southeast Asian football within the FIFA system. If the ASEAN Cup is genuinely becoming a FIFA-scale event, the weight of every selection decision will rise substantially. And Herdman's decision today will be judged not only by one regional tournament, but by an entire new commercial cycle. 67 loan deals — not a number, but 67 unfinished stories. I once analysed 67 Premier League loan deals during the pandemic season of 2026 and realised one thing: the bigger the change, the more unanswered questions it leaves behind. Indonesia's national team is the same now. Fourteen going out, dozens coming in, and nobody knows how it ends until the referee blows for the first match. The moment the transfer window closes, the emotions of those who stayed only begin to open. That is true for clubs, and it is true for national teams. So what happens next? I do not have a certain answer, and anyone who says they do is selling you a hypothesis. What I know for certain is this: John Herdman's decision will not be judged by the list, but by the results. If Indonesia go deep at the FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026, people will call him the architect of a new cycle. If they fall early, people will call him the man who destroyed the squad that once reached the final of the AFF Cup 2026. But there is one thing neither scenario can erase. Indonesian football is restructuring. The talent supply chain has reversed, and it will not turn back. Whatever happens in the coming months, a bigger question will linger for years: as Indonesian football becomes an importer of players rather than an exporter, what happens to the young boys in Bandung, in Surabaya, on the small pitches where they still dream of one day wearing the national shirt? We hunt news all day, but in the end the news hunts us. That question has no answer in Herdman's list. But it will be the question of a generation.