2,625 People, a Red-and-White Raincoat and the Word BELIEVE: When Indonesian Football Sells Belief Before Kickoff

I sat in the newsroom in São Paulo at 3 a.m., watching a 47-second clip reposted from Jakarta. On the pitch of Gelora Bung Karno, 2,625 people in red-and-white raincoats sat down on the same beat, and seven English letters appeared: BELIEVE. Not a slogan on a banner. Not a tifo rolled out from the stands. This was a human mural made of real people — arranged, counted, and entered into Indonesia's national record registry, MURI.

In 35 years of watching football, I have seen countless supporter displays. I have seen Napoli's tifosi turn Maradona into a saint. I have seen Argentine ultras set off flares so intense that the referee had to halt the match. I have seen Brazilians weep when Neymar fractured a vertebra. But what made me stop on the Jakarta clip was not the scale. What made me stop was who stood behind it.

Because this was not a spontaneous act from the stands. This was a product — designed, sponsored, measured, and sold.

And that is why I am writing this piece.

Let us set the context properly. The event took place before the opening match of a tournament the source calls the "FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026," at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium (SUGBK) in Jakarta, on 25 September 2026. The opponent of the Indonesian national team — nicknamed Garuda — was Singapore.

I will say one thing straight away, and I will return to it at the end: the name of the tournament is a fact to be verified, not a truth to be assumed. Southeast Asian national-team championships have historically been organised by the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF), not directly by FIFA. But I will not use that detail to wreck the whole story. I use it to remind you that when a story is this good, people stop checking.

Now, the event itself.

The co-organisers named in the source are AQUA — an Indonesian bottled-water and fast-moving consumer-goods brand — together with La Grande Indonesia, the largest organised supporters' group of the Indonesian national team. The reported figure is 2,625 people taking part in the formation, inside a crowd described as more than 6,000, inside a stadium with a capacity of roughly 77,000 to 80,000.

This is the first point where my eye stopped, and I want yours to stop there with mine.

If the stadium holds 77,000 and the mobilised crowd was over 6,000, that is under 8 percent of capacity. If 2,625 is the number who actually formed the mural, that is about 3.4 percent of capacity.

I am not saying this to diminish the event. I am saying it because it completely changes how we should read it. The human mural was not meant to fill the stands; it was meant to create an image that could be filmed, cut, posted, and spread. That is the logic of television, not the logic of the terraces.

And when an action is designed to become an image, the designer is not the audience. The designer is whoever paid for the image.

Let us talk about La Grande Indonesia. This is not a random fan group. It is a structured supporters' organisation with leadership and the capacity to negotiate with commercial partners. In Southeast Asian football, this is an increasingly common model: large supporter groups no longer merely sing from the stands; they become semi-official entities able to sign co-branded campaigns with brands.

The president of La Grande Indonesia, Unggul Indra, is quoted with a message I read over and over. He spoke of "dukungan adem" — in Indonesian, closest to "cool support," calm, non-aggressive support. And he said that support must come "not only when Garuda wins, but at every stage of the team's struggle."

AQUA's marketing director, Adisti Nirmala, was quoted with a similar message: the hope that the support continues to be "creative, sportsmanlike, and mutually respectful."

Now let me do my job.

People laughed at me for asking Mbappé about emotion; then all of France wept with happiness. I bring that up because it is exactly how I read this story. When a sports story is pushed to an emotional peak, the right question is not "how strong is the team," but "who needs this emotion, and to what end."

Let us start with the easiest thing to measure: the brand.

A campaign like this gives AQUA three things that traditional advertising cannot buy at once.

First, patriotic imagery. Red and white are the colours of the Indonesian flag. When a bottled-water brand appears in the same frame as the flag, it is no longer just a brand. It becomes part of national identity.

Second, authenticity. An ad that says "we love the national team" convinces no one. A real supporter group, genuinely organised, standing up to do it alongside you makes the story credible. This is why brands worldwide are shifting budgets from paid advertising to partnerships with fan communities.

Third, relative cheapness against reach. Look at the cost structure. A 30-second prime-time television spot in a large market can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single airing, and then vanishes. A 2,625-person human mural in a national stadium, entered into the MURI record book, covered by newspapers, shared on social media — the production cost may be far lower, but the media lifespan is many times longer.

I have written with specific numbers in every analysis of mine since the Neymar affair. I do not have AQUA's cost sheet in hand. But I have the structure. And this structure — low production cost, high media reach, tied to national emotion — is the return-on-investment structure every marketing director dreams of.

Now let us talk about something harder to measure: power.

That transfer window was not merely a purchase; it was a crack in an entire football ecosystem. I said that about PSG and Neymar in 2026, and I say it again here with a different meaning. When a supporters' group can stand shoulder to shoulder with a global brand in an event registered as a national record, that group has changed its position within the football ecosystem.

Think about this in the Southeast Asian context.

In the traditional model, the power structure of regional football has three tiers: the national federation at the top, the clubs in the middle, and the fans at the bottom. Money flows downward. Decisions are made downward. Supporters are objects to be served, not subjects who decide.

The event at SUGBK shows a fourth tier forming, or an old one surfacing: the organised supporters' group as a commercial partner. AQUA did not need to go through the Indonesian football federation to reach 6,000 fervent fans. They went direct. And La Grande Indonesia did not need anyone's permission to sign a co-branding agreement.

What does this mean? It means sponsorship money in national-team football is beginning to branch. One stream flows to the federation. One flows to clubs. And a new stream — the one growing — flows directly to supporters' groups.

I have tracked this trend in Europe for years. German clubs have long negotiated with ultras groups as genuinely powerful partners. English clubs learned to invite supporters' trusts to the table on ticket prices. But in Southeast Asia, where many federations still operate on centralised and opaque models, a supporters' group signing directly with an international FMCG brand is a leap in status.

And this is where I want you to look more closely at the message, not just the numbers.

Read Unggul Indra's words again: "not only when Garuda wins, but at every stage of the struggle." Read Adisti Nirmala's words again: "creative, sportsmanlike, mutually respectful."

Two different people. Two different roles — one a supporters' leader, one a marketing director. But they say the same thing.

I have been in this industry for 35 years. I have learned that when two different parties say the same sentence, that sentence is not accidental. It is a coordinated message.

And what is that message? It is: support the team, but do not cause trouble.

Why would a bottled-water brand care whether supporters cause trouble? Because a brand is tied to imagery. If flares, thrown objects, or altercations occur during the Singapore match, the AQUA logo sits in the same frame as those images. That is direct brand risk.

Why would a supporters' group care? Because if they want to keep receiving sponsorship money and recognition, they must prove they are a reliable partner, not a liability.

This is what I call the professionalisation of the terraces. It has two faces. On one side, it brings resources to the fan community. On the other, it places the most fervent supporters inside a frame — a frame built by whoever pays.

In Europe, I have seen ultras groups resist this trend. They say: we do not sell the terraces. In Southeast Asia, I see a different path: supporters' groups accept becoming partners, and use that status to gain a voice.

There is no right or wrong answer here. But there is one truth: when you take the money, you sit at the table. And when you sit at the table, you no longer sing from the terraces.

Let me add one more thing about the 6,000 figure.

In Southeast Asian football, the capacity to mobilise supporters is an asset. It does not appear on any club's balance sheet. It is not valued in any transfer deal. But it exists, and it can be converted into money.

A tournament with full stands, singing crowds, and beautiful imagery will sell broadcast rights at a higher price. A brand seeking to reach young men in Indonesia will pay more for a stadium with a fervent atmosphere. A country that can mobilise 6,000 people in an afternoon holds an advantage when bidding to host bigger events.

The capacity to mobilise fans is soft power. And in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is one of the countries that wields this soft power best. This is the conclusion I am most confident about in this piece, because it is directly evidenced by a number: 2,625 people forming a mural in a national stadium, in one afternoon, under the coordination of a supporters' group.

I was at the Maracanã in 2026. I saw Brazilians sing the national anthem. I know what that atmosphere is worth to television. And I know that in Southeast Asia, there are terraces that can match it in emotional intensity, even if not in economic scale.

Let me tell a story from my own experience. In 2026, I was sent to Russia as a field reporter for a television network. At the pre-quarterfinal press conference, I asked head coach Didier Deschamps whether he feared the pressure of an entire nation weighing on Kylian Mbappé — then 19 years old. A male reporter sitting beside me laughed. He said: another girl's emotion question. I replied: it is emotion that determines performance.

That night, I wrote a prediction that France would win it all. Not because I analysed tactics better than anyone else. Because I looked at the rhythm of play and the psychology of a young player, and I saw that he was not afraid.

On 15 July 2026, France beat Croatia 4-2. Mbappé scored. The press room fell silent.

I tell this story because it relates directly to the mural in Jakarta. When we assess a sporting event, we tend to look at the hardware: squad, system, fitness. But the software — emotion, expectation, identity — is the decisive part. And the software can be manufactured, packaged, and sold.

So let us look at that human mural this way: it is not a fan ritual; it is a media product whose raw material is fan emotion.

Now, about the record.

MURI — Museum Rekor-Dunia Indonesia — is a national record-keeping body, not a football organisation. This matters, and I want to be clear. A MURI record has no sporting value. It does not affect the match result. It does not change the standings. It does not make Indonesia stronger.

But it has media value. And in the modern sports industry, media value is a currency.

Think about how a record is made and used. You stage a countable event. You invite the record body. You receive a certificate. You put the certificate in a press release. Newspapers cover it. The sponsor brand gets attention. The supporters' group gets recognition. And everyone in that chain benefits.

I am not saying the record is fake. I am saying that a record is a manufactured product, not a discovered event. It is created with a purpose, and that purpose is publicity.

This does not make the event bad. It makes it clearer.

And once we understand it clearly, we can ask the right questions. Not "is the Indonesian team stronger" — a human mural cannot answer that. But "how is Indonesian football's ecosystem changing" — and the answer is: it is decentralising, it is commercialising, and it is giving fans a new role.

Let me compare it with what I know.

In Brazil, the torcidas organizadas have a long tradition and considerable power, sometimes violent. They can pressure clubs, coaching staffs, and sometimes results. But their model is a model of confrontation, not commercial partnership.

In Indonesia, and perhaps across much of Southeast Asia, the emerging model is partnership. Supporters' groups do not confront brands; they partner with brands. They do not confront the federation; they seek a seat at the meetings.

This may be a better path. It is less violent. It is more transparent. But it also means the terraces are being absorbed into a system they do not control.

In 2026, I learned to listen to football with my heart when the stadiums had no human sound. I bring that up because it is directly relevant here. When the pandemic froze every league and I lost my television commentary contract, I launched a livestream series about the forgotten people of football. I invited assistant coaches, stadium cleaners, unemployed former players. The episode about João — a man who had cleaned the Maracanã for 20 years and lost his job overnight to social distancing — reached 2.1 million views. More than 340,000 reais were donated.

I realised football is not only what happens on the pitch. It is tens of thousands of human lives contributing their breath to make a match happen.

The 2,625 people in red-and-white raincoats at SUGBK are part of that number. They are not passive spectators. They are emotional labour. They give their time, spend money on raincoats, arrive early, sit in the right spot, stand up and sit down on command to create an image. And that image is sold.

I do not object to that. I just want it called by its proper name.

Now let me talk about where I am uncertain.

Where could I be wrong?

I could be wrong in reading too much into too small an event. Let me argue against myself.

This may simply be a rewritten press release. A bottled-water brand wants a nice image. A supporters' group wants recognition. A record body wants another entry in its list. A newspaper wants traffic. And there is nothing deeper than that.

If that is true, then my analysis about "restructuring the Southeast Asian football ecosystem" is exaggeration. A human mural does not transform the power structure of a national football scene. It is just a human mural.

I accept that risk. And here is why I still write this piece.

This event is a signal, not proof. A single signal cannot demonstrate a trend. But it is one data point, and in my work, data points gain value when tracked over time. If over the next 12 months I see three or four similar campaigns — brands partnering directly with supporters' groups in Indonesia, in Vietnam, in Thailand — then that is a trend. If I see nothing more, then this is a one-off, and I will say I over-read it.

That is how I preserve credibility. Last week I got a prediction wrong, and I wrote it out. I will do the same here: I am betting on a trend, and I will check it again in a year.

Now, the most uncomfortable part of this piece.

I want to return to the "dukungan adem" message — cool support.

I said that the emphasis on sportsmanship and mutual respect is a coordinated message. But I have not yet said what it fully means.

In media analysis, when a party stresses a quality too much, it is often a sign that the quality is under threat. When a coach says "we need to stay calm" three times in a press conference, it is usually because his team is losing its calm.

So why would a brand and a supporters' group together stress sportsmanship before a match against Singapore?

There are two readings.

The first, gentler reading: this is a standard preventive communications campaign. Southeast Asian football has a history of tension between neighbouring countries. Indonesia and Singapore have a complex relationship, and matches between them often carry high emotional intensity. Reminding supporters to behave properly is normal and welcome.

The second, heavier reading: there is a real past problem with supporter behaviour, and this message is a preventive effort to stop it recurring.

I have no evidence to assert the second reading. But I have reason to raise it. Because when a commercial brand — not the football federation — speaks about supporter behaviour, it shows the brand is protecting itself. And a brand only protects itself when it senses risk.

This is a point I want you to track. Not to criticise. To understand.

And now, the matter of the tournament's name.

I said at the start I would return to it, and now is the time.

The source calls the tournament the "FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026." To my understanding, Southeast Asian national-team championships are organised by the ASEAN Football Federation, abbreviated AFF. The competition has carried many names over the years — Tiger Cup, AFF Suzuki Cup, and more recently names tied to other sponsors. Attaching the FIFA name directly to a regional competition is uncommon in world football's current governance structure.

There are three possibilities.

First: this is a renamed and restructured tournament with direct FIFA involvement. That could happen — FIFA has overhauled many competitions in recent years and is expanding its influence to regional levels.

Second: this is a sourcing error. A reporter or editor attached the FIFA name to an AFF tournament by mistake.

Third: this is a hypothetical or unconfirmed future tournament.

I do not know the answer. And I say so plainly.

But here is why this detail matters more than it appears. If the source is wrong about the tournament's name, we have reason to question the accuracy of other details. Not to dismiss the whole story. But to adjust our level of confidence.

In my profession, this is called cross-checking. You never rely on a single source for an important event. You find a second, a third. And when you find a detail that seems off, you note it, and you keep reading with a higher degree of caution.

I said this in the Neymar affair of 2026, and I was right. Not because I am smarter than others. Because I bothered to count.

And here is the final point in this contrarian section.

I want to talk about expectation risk.

In sports media analysis, there is a pattern I call the "hype-to-kill cycle." It works like this. Media pushes a story to its peak. Fans start to believe. Expectations rise. Then results arrive — and if they do not match expectations, the same media apparatus turns and criticises.

The word "BELIEVE" is a dangerous word in football. It is not a prediction. It is a call. And calls cannot be wrong — but those who answer them can be disappointed.

If Indonesia beat Singapore in the opener, the "BELIEVE" story is validated, and everyone in that chain benefits. If Indonesia draw or lose, then the very people who built the human mural must face the question: so what was this belief for?

This is an asymmetry. The cost of pushing expectations high is asymmetric to the benefit. The benefit is short-term and shared. The risk is long-term and concentrated on the team.

And I have seen this too many times. I saw it in Brazil in 2026, when an entire nation believed the home team would win at home, and then lost 7-1 to Germany. I saw it in France in 2026, when a gifted generation was crushed by expectations. I have seen it in Argentina, in England, in the Netherlands.

Belief is an asset. But it is also a liability. And that liability comes due.

I want to return to something that happened to me in 2026, because it taught me how to handle liabilities like these.

In August 2026, in the Tokyo Olympic women's football final, Brazil drew 0-0 with Canada after 120 minutes and lost 2-3 on penalties. That same night, I wrote a piece arguing that the team did not lose for lack of Marta or Debinha, but because they only convened three weeks before the tournament, while Canada had a long-term development programme. The piece spread so fast that the Brazilian Football Confederation was forced into an emergency meeting and invited me to be a communications advisor for women's football.

Over five meetings, I sat with 23 federation members — mostly men. I could have criticised them. Instead, I listened and asked questions so that they would recognise the benefit of increasing the budget themselves. The result: communications budget for the women's team rose 47 percent.

I tell this story because it relates to my final question about the Jakarta event.

A human mural can be the start of something better, or it can be an empty performance. What separates those two possibilities is not the mural itself. It is what happens afterwards. Is there a roadmap? Is there a long-term commitment? Or is there just a photo op?

That is the question I cannot answer from São Paulo. And it is the question I put back to those who staged the event at SUGBK.

So what do I predict?

I will offer verifiable judgments, because a judgment that cannot be verified is not a judgment. It is just an opinion.

First, I predict that the model of partnership between FMCG brands and organised supporters' groups will appear more often in Southeast Asia over the next 12 to 18 months. The signal to watch is new co-branded campaigns, especially in markets with strong supporter bases such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Second, I predict that La Grande Indonesia will use this new status to negotiate more with the Indonesian football federation and with sponsors. The signal to watch is the appearance of supporters' group representatives at official events, or in discussions about ticket prices and fan rights.

Third, I predict that if the opener against Singapore ends unfavourably, we will see a reversal in the media narrative within 48 hours of the match. The signal to watch is headlines shifting from the language of "belief" to the language of "disappointment."

And I will check myself. In a year, I will reread this piece, and I will say clearly which parts were right and which were wrong.

A woman said a small thing; people mocked her. Five years later, they repeated it. I spoke about what I learned from the empty stadiums of 2026. I learned that football does not belong to those sitting in meeting rooms. It belongs to those who come to the stadium.

The 2,625 people in red-and-white raincoats in Jakarta came to the stadium. They sat down, and they made a word. That word may be an advertisement, or it may be an oath. We do not know yet. We will know when the referee blows the whistle.

That is the most beautiful and the most cruel thing about football. Everything before the match is just words. And only one thing can answer words: the result.

I will watch that match. Not because I love the Indonesian national team — I have never hidden that I am Brazilian, and my heart is elsewhere. But because I want to see whether a word can stand against a reality.

Football always answers that question. And the answer always arrives within 90 minutes.