Indonesia and the 14 Names Cut: When Herdman Chose Function Over Position

Fourteen names were struck off a list in a single afternoon. No newsroom in Southeast Asia put that detail in a headline, yet it is the most readable data point of the week. John Herdman, head coach of the Indonesia national team, cut 14 players from his FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026 plans. Among those dropped were men he had trusted at AFF Cup 2026, which is to say that until recently they were part of the machine.

A coach does not cut 14 players because he changed his mind. He cuts because the structure he is building no longer has a slot for that type of player. Having followed enough national team cycles, I have learned that large purges always speak about system rather than form. What was cut was not people, but a mode of operation.

Context: a national team swapping out its spine

To read this purge correctly, you have to place it on its own track. Indonesian football has entered a cycle of large-scale naturalisation. Since 2026, the Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) under chairman Erick Thohir has pursued a strategy of bringing in Indonesia-eligible players based in Europe, turning overseas resources into the backbone of the national team. AFF Cup 2026 was the first near-complete showcase. The results were acceptable. The way the team operated exposed the problems.

On 18 September 2026, PSSI announced a trimmed squad of 23 players for the FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026. On 19 September, Erick Thohir posted a message to the players, asking them to play bravely and give their best for the red and white flag. This is the standard language of a federation chairman before a tournament, and it is also the kind of language that says nothing about tactics.

The interesting part sits elsewhere. Within those 23 names are two faces that have never played a single minute at senior international level: Luke Vickery and Dion Markx. Both are naturalised players. Markx officially became an Indonesian citizen on 8 February 2026. Vickery completed his naturalisation on 16 July 2026, less than two months before making the list. One man was granted citizenship in order to play for the national team; the other was granted it two months before a tournament. Two different speeds, two different ways of using people.

The core: selecting positions, or selecting functions

I have tracked the Indonesian national team across three different coaching regimes. What catches my attention with Herdman is not how many naturalised players he called up, but the criteria he used to cut them. Looking at the group of 14, a common denominator emerges: most were players who perform well inside a fixed box but cannot read space once a match breaks open.

Position is only a starting point; the system decides the destination. A good full-back in a back four can become a dead point in a back three if he does not understand when to push high and when to tuck inside. A centre midfielder who is good at screening can become a burden when the team shifts to high pressing, because he is half a beat late reading the opponent's sideways pass.

In that sense, the 14 cuts are not exactly a verdict on ability. They are the consequence of a change in spatial requirements. At national team level, where camp time is measured in days, a coach is forced to select by function rather than by the position written on a file. There is no time to re-teach. There is only time to assemble.

In regional football, a purge of this scale rarely happens before a tournament in which a team is highly rated. Normally a coach keeps the frame intact to preserve stability and changes gradually afterwards. Herdman did the reverse, which suggests he is reading the cycle differently: this tournament is an installation phase, not a harvest phase. When a coach accepts short-term risk in exchange for long-term structure, he is saying that what he fears most is not defeat in this round, but another two years of stagnation.

This is why Herdman pushing Luke Vickery and Dion Markx into the senior squad should be read as a tactical statement, not a media experiment. Vickery, with such a short integration window, is clearly not there for experience. He is there because his functional profile matches what Herdman lacks. Markx, who has held citizenship since early 2026, enjoys a longer integration advantage, and in modern football integration time is a technical metric, not an administrative detail.

Borrowing basketball language, Indonesia are trying to move from position-based play to non-positional football. In basketball, when a team operates in a non-positional state, all five players on the floor must handle the ball, read gaps and rotate roles. Nobody is allowed to stand still and wait. A football team is the same when it shifts to flexible systems: every player must be a node in a network rather than a cog in a chain.

The non-positional revolution does not abolish positions; it renders them obsolete. That is what is happening in Indonesia, and it also explains how a team stacked with European-based players can still be figured out at a regional tournament. The cause lies elsewhere: individual quality only generates value when placed inside a structure capable of amplifying it.

On the other side of the story, Laurin Ulrich has just received his first call-up to the Germany U-21 side for the 2027 European Under-21 Championship qualifiers against Latvia, Malta and Georgia. Ulrich is a midfielder of Surabaya descent, meaning a potential loss for Indonesian football. Indonesian media framed it as bad news. I see a lesson about timing. A player chooses his country based on realistic playing opportunities, not bloodline. When Germany opened the door first, Indonesia lost an option. The football talent market works like a capital market: whoever decides earlier and more clearly wins.

That lesson has direct consequences for how PSSI should handle its pipeline. When media mention three players of comparable or greater quality who could be naturalised, the question is not who is better. The question is who accepts first. A national team does not win a talent race by waiting for players to come knocking. It wins by defining in advance the functional profile the system lacks, then actively filling that gap.

The contrarian angle: the trap of patching positions

What most regional commentary overlooks is this: naturalisation does not create a system, it only creates manpower. If a federation uses naturalisation to patch individual boxes on the pitch, it will get back exactly what it invested: a squad with good individuals and little structure.

I once wrote about the "Orlando bubble" in basketball, the moment a team reached its peak under special playing conditions and then collapsed when those conditions vanished. Southeast Asian football risks creating a similar version at national team level: a collection of European players slotted in, a few regional results, then exposed gaps against organised continental opponents. A bubble does not burst because the manpower is weak. It bursts because the manpower has no network to lean on.

On this point, the Japanese experience gives me a yardstick. Japanese teams are not strong because of discipline; they are strong because they understand why discipline is required. That is what I call soft discipline: not obedience to orders, but understanding principles deeply enough to make the right decision in situations nobody trained you for. Japan at the 2026 World Cup is the example. In the round of 16 against Belgium they led 2-0 and lost 3-2. The media called it a tragedy. But look at the running data: Japan outran Belgium by more than 12 kilometres per match and dominated high pressing for most of the game. What they lost was a moment, not a system.

Indonesia today sit one step earlier on that journey. They have bought the manpower. They have not finished building the system.

Dropping down to club level, Persib Bandung's search for two goalkeepers in the 2026/2027 transfer window, Ivan Susak and Matej Markovic, reveals another layer of logic running in parallel. When national team standards change, clubs must prepare for an environment in which pressure on goalkeepers increases: more balls coming from international duty, more players returning with different physical demands, more matches played at higher tempo. The goalkeeper is the last position in the decision chain, and the one that most clearly reflects the quality of organisation in front of him. Buying two goalkeepers is not buying two people. It is buying stability for a structure in transition.

Notably, Persib are not hunting a striker or a creative midfielder, the positions usually prioritised in Southeast Asian transfer windows. They are hunting a shot-stopper. In a season where domestic clubs face pressure from a congested calendar and from key players being called up, stability in goal becomes the lowest-risk investment available. It is the kind of decision that generates no headlines but generates points.

What to watch

I do not prophesy; I only read the evidence before the current changes direction. For Indonesia, the evidence to watch at the FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026 is not per-match results. It is how Luke Vickery and Dion Markx are used: as a fixed position, or as a rotating function. If they hold one box and never leave it, the purge of 14 will have been nothing more than a large-scale substitution. If they move with space, swap roles by situation, and Indonesia look different without the ball than with it, then a system is taking shape.

Southeast Asian football has reached the threshold where manpower is no longer the differentiator. Anyone can naturalise, anyone can buy players. The difference will come from the ability to turn a set of individuals into a machine that self-corrects. What Indonesia lack is the time for a system to soak into each person, and that is a resource no contract can purchase.