An Institutional Issue on Football Competition, Indonesia League Tragedy

Abstract

Beginning with the overflow of mass emotions which led to uncontrolled collective action causing as many as 135 people to die and more than 750 others to be injured in a sports match. This article analyses a problem that has shocked the people and government in Indonesia and has become one of the most important issues in world football from an institutional perspective. In the first two weeks after the incident, the police, the main football organization in the country, and the event organizers seemed to try to escape responsibility. However, the country's swift move to immediately form a Joint Independent Fact Finding Team (TGIPF) on D+1 two weeks later concluded that the match management had committed many violations of the basic principles as guided by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Through analysis of secondary data, namely news coverage in the mass media, social media, and qualitative analysis of video recordings from interested parties, this article reiterates that ignoring standard standards in the form of official football rules is a fundamental problem as the cause of a human tragedy.