Maarten Paes, Ole Romeny and Indonesia's Draining Naturalisation Pipeline

In February 2026, inside a closed room in Jakarta, Ole Romeny raised his hand and took the oath. Cameras flashed, yet the corridor outside was strangely quiet. Nobody applauded. People simply looked at one another, as if they had just signed a document they were not certain they fully understood. Six months earlier, in a hotel in Dallas, Maarten Paes received word that FIFA had approved his federation transfer. He closed the door and sat still for a long time.

Silence is a language, and only those who have stood in an empty stadium understand it.

An oath and an approved application are two ends of the same pipeline. That pipeline is lifting Indonesia to a position Southeast Asian football has never seen, while quietly running dry at the other end.

Two gates, not one

Paes was born in 2026, plays goalkeeper, and once wore the Netherlands U21 shirt. Romeny is a forward. Both carry entirely European blood. Their only common ground lies in their grandparents: people born on the territory of the former Dutch East Indies.

To wear the Indonesia shirt, a player must pass two independent gates. The first is nationality law — specifically Article 20 of Law No. 12/2026, which permits naturalisation on “state interest” grounds and requires approval by Indonesia’s House of Representatives (DPR). The second is FIFA’s substantial-connection criterion: a player may represent the federation where a biological parent or grandparent was born.

Neither gate demands indigenous ancestry. Paes cleared the FIFA gate through a change of association, which he needed because he had played for the Netherlands U21; his file was approved in August 2026. Romeny cleared the nationality gate through his oath in February 2026. They are not alone: Haye, Verdonk and Diks belong to the same cohort.

Indonesia’s Kompas calls these “exceptional cases” and uses the phrase “legal loophole”. That phrase is the writer’s opinion, not a legal fact. The grandparent-birthplace criterion is a rule FIFA designed deliberately, not a system error.

Why a goalkeeper and a centre-forward

Based on my experience tracking matches across Southeast Asia, the goalkeeper and the centre-forward carry the largest single-player leverage in any national team. A reliable goalkeeper stabilises a back line that rarely has time to gel at international level. A striker who knows how to score solves exactly the kind of match Indonesia tends to get stuck in: plenty of possession, no goals.

Placing two players in precisely those slots is a far more efficient use of naturalisation than filling wide positions. This is the “buying club” model applied to a national team — finished goods purchased rather than developed, with not a single transfer fee paid.

The price is not financial. It sits in administrative, legal and political capital: PSSI pursued Paes’s file over an extended period, through multiple layers of procedure spanning two legal systems. In return, Indonesia has a recruitment channel Vietnam and Thailand cannot simply copy, because their colonial-era diaspora populations are far smaller.

A pipeline that does not renew itself

That resource has a property few articles mention: it is a closed historical population. The Dutch who stayed on in the Indies — the blijvers — and their descendants are not being replenished. Every successful naturalisation is a slot permanently removed from the pipeline.

Put another way, Indonesia is spending a savings account opened last century. Its value is enormous in the short term and zero in the long term without an academy system to replace it.

At the same time, importing a group of Europe-raised players compresses the minutes available to domestically developed talent. That is an invisible cost: a few starting places taken, a few pathways slowed.

The region is moving the same way. The Philippines and Malaysia have tried similar routes, with thinner diaspora pools. When several federations run the same playbook, any single one’s advantage is diluted.

Where I could be wrong

I once wrote a definitive pre-tournament piece before the 2026 World Cup, insisting Germany would win with a back three. Germany went out in the group stage. I learned that an analyst’s greatest limitation is over-certainty.

So here I state only what can be checked. Indonesia’s biggest risk is not legal. Both files are clean under two independent legal systems, and the chance of reversal is very low.

The real risk is reputational asymmetry: a future failed case would do far more damage than two successful ones bring benefit. Add single-point dependency — if Paes or Romeny is absent, the “strength uplift” story is immediately exposed.

One thing should be said plainly: the players’ morality is not the subject here. A transfer only means something when you see fear in a player’s eyes — and here the fear belongs to those who must decide who gets called up and who does not.

What to watch

Over the next one to three years, I believe the pressure will shift from Jakarta to Hanoi. As Indonesia keeps calling up Europe-based players, the Vietnam Football Federation will have to weigh whether to open a similar lane, even with a thinner resource base.

And Indonesia will have to choose: keep squeezing the historical pipeline until it runs dry, or use this precious window to build a more durable foundation.

I do not go to stadiums to witness victories, but to understand why people hold each other and cry. In Jakarta, nobody has cried yet. But the silence in that corridor in February already said a great deal.