Marked for Lu Junwei
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom14 Jan 2030
Pressure builds in the PSBS Biak boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Squad14 Jan 2030
22 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. PSBS Biak lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Transfer targets14 Jan 2030
The clubs have shaken hands with Persib; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Market14 Jan 2030
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at PSBS Biak, and it is not being withdrawn.
Transfer targets14 Jan 2030
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Persita is saying, and nobody at PSBS Biak is enjoying the guessing.
Transfer targets14 Jan 2030
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Persib have kept their man, and PSBS Biak go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad14 Jan 2030
Words at PSBS Biak training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Muhammad Toha is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad14 Jan 2030
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at PSBS Biak can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Squad14 Jan 2030
Fikri Arjidan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces24 Dec 2029
The mood at PSBS Biak has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Squad24 Dec 2029
“The easiest signature of my career.” Mufdi Iskandar and PSBS Biak agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad24 Dec 2029
Muhammad Toha falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The dugout24 Dec 2029
When it matters, Nurhidayat plays
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
The dugout24 Dec 2029
Dimas Galih knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dimas Galih trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The dugout24 Dec 2029
A promise honoured for Lu Junwei
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. PSBS Biak told Lu Junwei something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
The dugout24 Dec 2029
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Market24 Dec 2029
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Youshaa Knaj may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
Squad24 Dec 2029
Questions about Muhammad Toha on the training pitch
The standards have slipped, and in a building where everybody watches everybody it has not gone unremarked. This is how a player loses a place before he loses one.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad13 Aug 2029
A knee injury of the worst kind for Claudio Olivera
19 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. PSBS Biak lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market13 Aug 2029
Lu Junwei puts it in writing
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at PSBS Biak, and it is not being withdrawn.
Match11 Aug 2029
The wait goes on for PSBS Biak
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Transfer targets13 Aug 2029
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Arema keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
The dugout13 Aug 2029
This is not rotation. Heri Susanto has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at PSBS Biak is pretending otherwise.
Player ratings13 Aug 2029
Luquinhas runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 20. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Transfer targets13 Aug 2029
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad13 Aug 2029
A row about effort at PSBS Biak
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ilham Udin Armayn was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout13 Aug 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Youshaa Knaj, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces9 Jul 2029
Anger at PSBS Biak spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Claudio Olivera damages knee ligaments — 57 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 57 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad9 Jul 2029
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. PSBS Biak will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Match7 Jul 2029
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 88th, and Madura United spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
Player ratings9 Jul 2029
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.87, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Market9 Jul 2029
Lu Junwei puts it in writing
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at PSBS Biak, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market9 Jul 2029
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Transfer targets9 Jul 2029
Persebaya wanted more than $210.0K and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Boardroom9 Jul 2029
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces25 Dec 2028
Supporters organise against the PSBS Biak board
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Squad25 Dec 2028
A fracture rules Sendri Johansyah out for 74 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PSBS Biak will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad25 Dec 2028
A row about effort at PSBS Biak
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dimas Drajad was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad25 Dec 2028
Yardan Yafi in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSBS Biak this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout25 Dec 2028
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Mohcine Hassan is on it.
The dugout25 Dec 2028
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at PSBS Biak, and both men came out saying it was fine.