HE’S got a rare knack of winning major football champions in the region and now Robert Alberts, with a famous reputation in Malaysia and Singapore, has landed a new three-year contract with the West Java-based professional club Persib Bandung.

And his immediate target is to continue the upward streak of the Bandung club in Indonesia’s Liga 1, the top tier of Indonesian football.

“It’s a massive challenge and I’m going to give it my best shot,” says the 64-year-old Dutchman of the club, founded in June 1933 from a merger of three clubs. It has not been relegated from the top flight since the formation of the Indonesian League in 1994.

Persib’s home stadium is the Gelora Bandung Lautan Api Stadium which has a capacity of 38,000. The club’s nicknames are Maung Bandung (The Bandung Tiger) and Pangeran Biru (The Blue Prince).

The club won their first Indonesian Super League (now known as Liga 1) title in 2014  assisted by Glenn Sugita, the first title of the Liga Indonesia in 1995, and 5 Perserikatan titles. Persib reached the quarter-finals of the Asian Club Championship in 1995.

Alberts is no newcomer to Indonesia, having coached PSM Makassar in two different stints (2010-11 and 2016-19) and Arema FC (2009-10). He has also coached Singapore’s Home United in 1999 as well as Sarawak FA and Kedah FA in Malaysia.

He was voted the ‘Best Coach’ during stints in Malaysia and Singapore and also as the top coach in the Torabika Soccer Championship in Indonesia in 2016.

AJAX AMSTERDAM

A former Ajax Amsterdam junior player (1966-1976), he started his coaching career in Sweden, then moved to Malaysia where he won the league and Malaysia Cup titles with Kedah FA in 1993. He also has coached in Singapore with Tanjong Pagar and Home United, winning the S-League title with Home United in 1999. Later he coached the national youth teams of South Korea and Malaysia.

He made the big headlines, too, when he managed the Indonesian champion Arema Malang in 2009-10. He became the first foreign manager to win the Indonesian championship title in first season.

I know he takes even the tough times up his proverbial chin, in smiling spirits, knowing he has always given the job his best shot. Significantly in Malaysia, it’s been a roller-coaster ride. Alberts took over as manager and head coach of Sarawak FA for the second time in 2011.

He had managed the team before in 2008–2009 before going to Indonesia. He held the post until his contract with Sarawak was mutually terminated in 2015, due to poor performances of the team in the 2015 Malaysian Super League.

SARAWAK STINT

During his stay in Sarawak, the team won the Premier League in 2013 and were runners-up in 2011, on both times winning promotion to the Super League. Sarawak also reached the semi-finals of the Malaysia Cup in 2013 with Alberts at the helm.

What I like about him is his honesty to his immediate bosses. When he left PSM Makassar in January this year, after taking them to sky-rocketing heights, he told the media that he is stepping down following some “serious health concerns”, citing the doctor’s orders as the major reason for his departure from the club.

He said: “The main reasons are some serious health problems. The doctors strongly recommended that I take a short break. For the next three months I will be treated. And after this period there will be a review of my condition.”

With the unfashionable ISC outfit, PSM Makassar, the Sulawesi-based side was near the bottom of the table. He took them to an impressive sixth in the 18-team league, despite a team lacking in superstars.

“I feel very good about the award because it is recognition for what we have done as a team,” Alberts then said when he was named as Indonesian ‘Coach of the Year 2016’. “The team spirit was fantastic, and it grew after I changed some players. I didn’t expect this. I didn’t even know they had awards.”

There were also serious talks that he may even land the national team job, too, after the contract of incumbent Indonesian coach Alfred Riedl expired.

“I always try and give my best shot in whatever job I do,” he says. “Football is a science and an art and if you teach the basics well to the players, they will slowly groom to be good players and play as a cohesive team that can challenge for the big titles.”

That’s exactly what Alberts plan to do now at Persib Bandung although the odds will be stacked heavily against him. But knowing the never-say-die fighter that he is, he readily knows that he can make a big difference in the three-year contract. – By SURESH NAIR

 

  • Suresh Nair is a Singapore-based football writer who has known Robert Alberts for over two decades as a very street-smart, knowledgeable and hardworking coach
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