Maarten Paes, Ole Romeny and the Nationality Question Heating Up Southeast Asia

Last autumn, during a podcast recording in Nagoya, a young colleague slid an Indonesian news bulletin toward me. Two names sat neatly on the page: Maarten Paes, a goalkeeper born in 2026; Ole Romeny, a forward. Both were born in Europe, both carry Dutch blood, and in the words of Indonesian media, neither has a single drop of indigenous blood. I read slowly, then set the paper down beside my old microphone. "Nagoya still echoes every time I touch this old mic." There are football stories I have heard across nearly seven decades, stories I thought had grown old, and yet this time they landed exactly where I stand — between the Southeast Asia where I was born and the Japan where I work.

Two doors that had to open

The story begins with a simple fact: Indonesia's national team wants to be stronger, and it chose the path of naturalization. For Maarten Paes, the journey was a little more complicated. He had played for the Netherlands U21 side, which meant that to wear Indonesia's shirt he had to request a federation transfer from FIFA — a procedure permitted only once in a career, and often the bottleneck for players who have already represented another country's youth teams. In August 2026, FIFA approved it. For Ole Romeny, the final step was the oath of Indonesian citizenship in February 2026.

Before that, both had to clear a domestic legal gate: Indonesia's House of Representatives (DPR) approved the naturalization petitions under Article 20 of Citizenship Law No. 12/2026 — a provision that allows naturalization on grounds of "state interest." The article notes that PSSI pursued Paes's file persistently over a long period, implying that the legal and lobbying effort was far from trivial.

The second door sits at FIFA. World football's governing body has a "substantial connection" criterion, which allows a player to represent a national team if a biological grandparent was born on that federation's territory. Paes and Romeny both meet this criterion through grandparents born in the Dutch East Indies during the colonial era. Both doors opened without the need for a single drop of indigenous blood.

What the media calls a loophole

Indonesian press calls these "exceptional cases" and speaks of "legal loopholes." That wording made me pause. Over a career in commentary, I have learned that some words get misused until they harden into prejudice. A "loophole" carries the meaning of a flaw, a gap someone slips through. But the grandparent-born-on-territory criterion is a rule FIFA designed deliberately, one that has long existed and applies to every member federation. It is not a hole to slip through. It is an open door, meant for players whose bloodline is tied to more than one country.

The crux lies here: eligible does not equal indigenous. A player can be eligible under both citizenship law and football criteria while still carrying none of the blood of the country he represents. This is the heart of every argument, not the question of rule-bending. The line worth debating is not legality — it is the sense of belonging, something no passport can measure.

Why those two positions

Looking at the roles of the two figures, I see a logic so cold it becomes convincing. Paes is a goalkeeper. Romeny is a central striker. In football, the goalkeeper and the central forward are the two positions with the greatest leverage on results. A steady goalkeeper stabilizes the entire back line — where familiarity tends to be low in national-team settings, since centre-backs train together only a few days per call-up. A forward who knows how to score turns a stalemate into a win. Investing in this central spine is far more efficient than adding on the flanks or in peripheral roles. Indonesia didn't choose at random; they chose exactly where it hurts most.

But it must be said plainly: the article asserts that Indonesia's team has become "significantly stronger" without citing a single figure. No FIFA points, no qualifying results, no technical indices. The belief that naturalization brings strength has a basis, but it has not been proven with data. I have followed Southeast Asian teams for years, and I always remind myself: the quality at the spine is real, but the "strength" of a freshly assembled collective must wait for actual call-ups.

The contrarian view: a stream running dry

This is where I want to linger longer than anywhere else. All of Southeast Asia is talking about naturalization as a miracle. But naturalization based on grandparental eligibility is not an endless wheel. It draws on a historical population layer: the descendants of Dutch settlers who stayed in the Indies — the "blijvers" — and mixed communities settled over generations. That is a closed population, one that does not reproduce for football's purposes. Every player pulled in is a portion scooped out of that pool. In the long run, the source will run dry.

Meanwhile, the Philippines and Malaysia are chasing the same formula. When many nations use the same legal trick, any single nation's advantage dilutes. The nationality race in Southeast Asia ultimately buys time, not a foundation. "The pitch does not need a poet, but the poet needs the pitch." A football nation that only buys finished players while neglecting youth development is taking out a loan — it just hasn't reached the repayment date.

What it means for Vietnam

From this angle, Indonesia is a more formidable rival than it was a few years ago. It holds a historical advantage we cannot copy: a colonial-descendant community large enough to recruit from. Vietnam, with its French colonial history and a thinner diaspora of footballers, does not have the same pool. That forces Vietnamese football to compete on a slower but more durable path: development and cohesion.

Still, I won't lull myself. I have seen many national teams collapse not for lack of talent, but because new arrivals had not yet blended into the collective. The dressing room is where it is decided. If PSSI is more eager about fast naturalization than the coaching staff is capable of building team chemistry, that will be the next breaking point. Indonesia's biggest risk right now is reputational rather than legal.

A thought to leave behind

I believe every play has a heart beating inside it. So do Paes and Romeny. They will prove their worth with saves and goals, not with passport lines. But behind them, a question still hangs in the air: if Indonesia grows stronger through people not born there, what is Southeast Asian football teaching the next generation — that roots matter, or that a passport matters more? I leave that question to the young people now holding the microphone. "A letter to an empty stand — football reads every line." As for me, I stay here, watching where the ball rolls next.