PETALING JAYA: The city of Bandung is rejoicing after their club Persib bagged the Liga 1 Indonesia title after 10 years and they have one Croatian to thank.
Former Kelantan, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Darul Ta’zim (JDT) coach Bojan Hodak did not have any high expectations for a side that were 16th out of 18 clubs when he took over on July 26 last year.
The charismatic Croatian weaved his magic and made sure they finished second in the regular season to qualify for the Championship playoffs.
In the two-legged final against Madura United, Hodak helped the club to win the Championship by clinching a convincing 6-1 aggregate.
Best coach: Bojan Hodak and his wife Junie Tan posing with the mock cheque.
“When you win any trophy, it is good. When I joined the club, they were 16th in the league out of 18 teams. My expectations weren’t high but I know Persib are a big club,” he said.
“We had few good results and the expectations got higher and higher. When the league season ended, we finished top four, which was our target.
“In the Championship playoffs, we looked really good and eventually got the title. Bandung will be madness for sure and I have seen the images before our arrival.”
Thanks to his league success, he also won the Liga 1 Best Coach award, where he picked up 150,000,000 rupiah (RM43,386).
Persib are Hodak’s second club in Indonesia as he used to coach PSM Makassar in 2020. The Liga 1 victory is his ninth major honour since becoming a coach in 2006.
He won the Malaysian Super League in 2012 with Kelantan and in 2014 with JDT. He also won the Cambodian Premier League with Phnom Penh Crown in 2011.
He said the Indonesian League is improving as football is the biggest sport there and the growth of the national football team has seen the clubs doing their best to improve infrastructure and planning for the game to continue to grow there.
“When I coached Makassar, I felt the Malaysian League was stronger and better because they had more foreigners,” he said.
“But now the Indonesian League have six foreigners and in the upcoming season, there will be eight.
“For me, there is not much of a difference between the Malaysian and Indonesian League.
“The local players here, most of them come from poor backgrounds, so you have hungrier players than in Malaysia.
“Here you do not need to force them to do more work, they will do whatever you want.
“The league is much more interesting because in Malaysia, it is dominated by one but in Indonesia, a lot of good clubs are here with sound investments.”
He added that the drawbacks are travelling because of Indonesia’s size and the constant fixture changes, which can be a problem in terms of organisation and planning.
As for his future, Hodak revealed that his contract expired on the day he won the title.
“But I am already discussing a new contract. Most probably I will continue to stay here.”
