Four Years After Kanjuruhan: The Unfinished Ledger of Safety Governance in the FIFA–PSSI–State Triangle

October 1, 2026, Malang, East Java. It was half past ten at night. The people pressed against Gate Three of Kanjuruhan Stadium did not know that their last breath was hidden in the few metres of shoving ahead. In that Liga 1 evening, Arema FC had lost 2-3 to Persebaya Surabaya in the East Java derby. After the final whistle, the frustration of the stands spilled onto the pitch and then toward the gates. Police fired tear gas. In the narrow outlets, the crowd jammed and compressed into an unbearable pressure. The next morning, Indonesian authorities reported 135 dead and 583 injured. Among the dead were children who may never have understood where the boundary between stand and pitch actually lay.

Four years later, on October 1, 2026, FIFA President Gianni Infantino sent a condolence message. The language was courteous, dignified, carefully arranged. Kanjuruhan was described as an unhealed wound in the memory of the Indonesian football public, and a promise was made to make Indonesian football safe. The Indonesian outlet VIVA published the message. The question gathers right there: why does a condolence message arrive four years later, and what does it actually prove — grief, or an attempt to settle the ledger of governance?

Where the broadcast stops, my autopsy begins. But this incident has no pitch data. No one ran an xG, because the accounting here was not of goals but of people. Yet the ledger cannot be closed. Kanjuruhan is not an ordinary football accident; it is a document of governance failure. And to settle a governance failure you need rules, liability, and a timeline.

The context must be made clear. The Kanjuruhan match was the Derby Jatim Timur — between East Java's two fiercest rivals, Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya. In Indonesian football, the relationship between these clubs is not merely a matter of the points table; it is a matter of civic identity. It is the kind of derby where the stands fill long before kick-off and the tension is manufactured well in advance. In safety-risk modelling, such high-intensity matches are always treated as an additional variable, because crowd density, gate width, and expectation pressure accumulate together.

The core sequence was post-match disorder: fans entering the pitch from the stands, police use of tear gas, and the crush of the crowd at the exit gates. Seen as three separate steps, it becomes clear the disaster was not a sudden event; it was the final step of a predictable chain. Then comes the heaviest fact. Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM), after investigation, concluded that human rights violations occurred — excessive use of force and deficiencies in match-safety governance. That single sentence changes the category of the entire incident. From here, it is no longer merely a crowd accident; it is a governance and rights failure. The words sound similar, but in legal and institutional risk terms they are worlds apart.

Why does the distinction matter? Because an accident is forgivable, but a failure demands accountability. In an accident, the question is what happened; in a failure, the question is who answers. Komnas HAM's finding pushed the question to the second side, and precisely there the meaning of the FIFA and PSSI commitment changes. In FIFA's message, Infantino called safety an important part of Indonesian football's transformation journey. The message notes that FIFA is investing in Indonesian football through FIFA Forward and other programmes — infrastructure, grassroots, and player development. Three institutions appear together: FIFA, PSSI (the Indonesian Football Association, chaired by Erick Thohir), and the Indonesian government. This triangle is the real map of Indonesian football after Kanjuruhan — not a map of the pitch, but a map of governance. And on a governance map, you count decision goals, not pitch goals.

Now to the core analysis. At the centre of this incident I hold two files — a safety file and a financing file. Opening them separately shows which file FIFA's message four years on is trying to close, and which remains open. First file: safety governance. Under international stadium-safety norms, the use of tear gas inside or around stadiums is generally prohibited or strictly limited. Tear gas does not control a crowd; it manufactures panic, and the first reaction to panic is flight — exactly what becomes lethal in narrow gates. At Kanjuruhan this very interaction occurred: gas, panic, gate pressure, suffocation. So the use of tear gas here is not merely a tactical mistake; it is a clear point of rule violation around which safety-governance reform should be built.

Second file: financing. FIFA Forward is FIFA's development-funding programme for member associations. Such funds are usually tranche-based and tied to audits and specific conditions. Indonesia is a recipient — for infrastructure, grassroots, and player development. But the important thing is that the message contains no figures. How much, in which tranche, under what conditions — nothing is said. An announcement of financing is a signal; but announcement and disbursement are not the same. Here is my first accounting caution. Between announced investment and disbursed investment there is a time discount, and the news message always hides that discount. When, four years on, development investment is mentioned at an anniversary, the questions to ask are: which tranches have been disbursed, which milestones met, and whether there is any mechanism to stop funding if safety conditions fail.

Read together, the two files reveal a symmetry. The safety file says: the rule existed, and it was broken. The financing file says: the money exists, the conditions exist, but the proof does not. Between the two files sits accountability, still open. A comparative dataset is needed here, because Kanjuruhan is not an isolated event. The 2026 Hillsborough disaster in the UK killed 97 people, after which the legal framework of stadium safety was rewritten. In 2026, 74 died at Port Said in Egypt; in 2026, 127 died in Accra, Ghana; in 2026, more than 80 died in Guatemala City. Placed side by side, a pattern becomes clear: crowd-safety failures are almost never new, and almost always follow a previously documented warning that was ignored.

So the Kanjuruhan question is not Indonesia-specific; it is a universal governance question. In international football governance the same puzzle keeps returning: rules sit on paper, enforcement sits with local police and administration, and accountability hangs between everyone. That suspended liability is the most dangerous kind, because if no one takes full ownership, no one delivers full reform. Here I add something from my own experience. I have run post-match data for many years, and every time I learn the same lesson: a disaster may look sudden, but before it there are always a few neglected columns. Kanjuruhan's neglected columns were gate width, crowd density, police equipment rules, and match classification. Had anyone computed these columns before 2026, Gate Three might have been designed differently.

Safety is not an emotion; safety is an input-output model: how many people, how many doors, how much time, how much control. Where this model is incomplete, no matter how warm the promise, risk does not fall. I run PPDA twice; the match then confesses on the spot. At Kanjuruhan I ran the same method — the same question twice, so that no single gap escapes the eye. The first time I questioned the pitch; the second time, the administration. The pitch's answer was: the game had ended, the people were inside. The administration's answer was: the exit was not wide enough, and the control instrument was wrong. Read together, the confession is clear: the failure was structural, not emotional.

Now the question is what Indonesian football's real position is four years on. One point must be made clear — I do not hold the dataset of every post-Kanjuruhan reform report. So I am not claiming no reform happened. What I am saying is: the public record does not show as much evidence of reform as it should. And the greatest proof of reform is never a statement, but two things — a change in the rules, and an outcome in accountability. A change in the rules means updated stadium-safety regulations, reformed policing protocols, clear enforcement of the tear-gas ban, and design standards for exit gates. An outcome in accountability means sanctions, prosecutions, or regulatory measures against responsible persons or institutions. Without either, reform remains incomplete.

And here is my second accounting caution. Where the accountability chain of an incident is open, an anniversary condolence becomes a control device: each year it returns, and each year it carries testimony of incompleteness. The more sincere the condolence, the more the question rises — why, despite such sincerity, has the ledger not balanced in four years? An uncomfortable point must be added. This article contains no accountability outcome, and that is itself the largest signal. If, four years after a national tragedy, accountability outcomes are still not clear in the public record, two possibilities emerge. One, outcomes exist but were not publicised. Two, outcomes do not exist or are incomplete. Both are problems: the first is a transparency deficit, the second a justice deficit.

Now to the contrary argument. What I have written so far carries a risk — the risk of reaching an easy conclusion. The easy conclusion is: FIFA only talks, never acts. But I do not believe such unfalsifiable claims. Because "it only talks" cannot be tested; it is an attitude, not a datum. And I do not write attitudes, I write models. To make the argument testable, it must be split into two levels. First, the relationship between a condolence message and reform is not simple cause and effect. The existence of a message does not prove reform happened; nor does it prove reform did not happen. The relationship between message and reality is a relationship, not a cause — and without understanding that difference, we mistake a headline for evidence.

Second, ask for whom the message is written. A condolence message has at least three readers: the grieving public, the regulator, and the sponsor-investor. The public seeks recognition, the regulator seeks consent, and the sponsor seeks a signal of stability. A successful message satisfies all three at once — and precisely for that reason it can be sincere and strategic at the same time. There is no need to choose; both are true. Without grasping this duality, we either believe everything or deny everything — both immature readings.

Third, the subtlest point is the role of the state in safety governance. In the FIFA-PSSI-government triangle there is a familiar tension — association independence versus state involvement. In FIFA's member-governance principles, the political independence of associations is a core tenet. But in Kanjuruhan's case, safety, policing, and public security are state responsibilities. That is, a large part of reform sits with the state — and that same state was implicated in the Komnas HAM report. Here lies the structural complexity: the one who bears the duty of reform does not fully hold the power; and the one who holds the power carries the duty. From this complexity a crucial rereading emerges. If the greatest obstacle to reform is structure, then blaming only clubs or FIFA is insufficient, and blaming only the state is also incomplete. The real accounting sits at the centre of the triangle — where liability, power, and financing are spread across three parts, and no one takes full ownership.

I will add another point learned from my own data experience. On tear gas I hold a clear position — the use of tear gas in a stadium can never be an effective crowd-management tactic. In a densely packed enclosed environment, gas does not disperse a crowd; it creates a directionless pressure. In the physics of crowd flow this is a known result: increase the obstruction and the flow decreases, and a decreased flow creates catastrophic pressure at narrow gates. Kanjuruhan is a tragic experiment in this physics, with a result known in advance.

Another counter-intuitive observation. We easily assume reform means severity — more police, more control. But in reality the core direction of reform is often the opposite: less friction, better design, clear communication, and management of expectation. In a high-intensity derby the greatest safety instrument is not the police but the management of time and space — when stands open, where crowds gather, how wide the exit is, and how the crowd is held when the result is announced. This management is finished before the match. What happens after the match is the result of earlier decisions. So Kanjuruhan teaches us that safety is not match-day work; safety is pre-match work. The key decisions of a match disaster are taken long before kick-off — in stadium design, in approval files, in the police equipment list. At Kanjuruhan the last decision was taken at half past ten at night, but the first decision was taken perhaps months earlier, on an approval paper.

Now to investment flows, because that is the forward-looking direction. The announcement of investment in infrastructure, grassroots, and player development through FIFA Forward and other programmes is a positive signal, because it points to raising the structural floor. Indonesia is a large football market, with both a huge population and huge interest. But a market being large and a market being safe and reliable are two different things. Here the transmission chain matters. Upstream are grassroots and talent supply; midstream are clubs, Liga 1, and PSSI; downstream are investment, commerce, and the national team. In this chain, safety-governance reform is the conduit. If safety governance is weak, upstream investment loses its value before it reaches downstream — because no sponsor or broadcaster wants to invest in a product where people die in the stands.

Financing and safety are not opposed; safety is the entry condition for financing. A football product that is not safe has a compressed market value. For Indonesia, therefore, reform is not only a moral duty; it is a commercial argument. There is a subtle economic reading here. After a tragedy the market reacts in two ways — short-term risk aversion, and, in the long term, if reform is proven, a compliance premium. That is, a safe, rule-abiding football product earns greater market trust. The Kanjuruhan tragedy is thus a tragic but possible opportunity for Indonesian football — if reform is proven in practice. But this possibility has one condition: proof. Announcement is not enough. If an investment is conditioned on safety progress, the indicators of that condition must be public — how many stadiums were upgraded, how many policing protocols changed, how many gate designs revised. Without numbers, the story of investment is incomplete.

I write this from Khulna, from a small room where for many nights I have run Indonesian league match data. My experience says the greatest asset of Indonesian football is its emotion, and that same emotion is its greatest risk. Because the stand that fills with love can sometimes become the centre of danger. Kanjuruhan is a tragic example of this duality. And here I recall an old lesson: no crowd, no alibi; the model must speak for itself. At Kanjuruhan there was a crowd, but there was no alibi either — because safety is an input, and where the input is missing, the output is death.

For years I have followed this principle — a conclusion must be stress-tested before release. So today I will challenge one claim of this piece myself. The claim is: four years on, reform remains incomplete. For this claim to hold, what is needed is not an absence of proof but a clear absence of proof. That is, my claim must not be unfalsifiable. So let me be explicit: if FIFA or PSSI publishes a binding safety-policy document, and with it publishes accountability outcomes, then my claim will be proven wrong. I will welcome that evidence, because my goal is not to be right but for the ledger to be right.

Here I arrive at the most uncomfortable contrary argument. We want reform to take a dramatic turn — a big announcement, a big sanction, a big decision. But in reality reform is often silent and tiring: a design revision, a protocol refinement, an update to a training schedule. These silent tasks create no headlines, so they slip from view. And precisely for that reason we need the habit of keeping accounts, because what does not become a headline does not enter history. Another contrary point is expectation management. A condolence message recognises public grief, but at the same time creates expectation — something will happen now. If that expectation is unmet, the same message returns the following year as a heavier burden. That is, a promise carries interest, and that interest grows every year.

One more matter deserves attention, often skipped: compensation. The families of 135 people, the long-term treatment of 583 injured, and the psychological trauma of thousands of spectators — all of it has a financial and social account. This article mentions no such account, and that is another empty cell. The final accounting of a tragedy does not end only with rules and punishment; it ends with what the affected families are owed. If that cell remains empty, the story of safety reform is only half told.

Finally, the forward signals. Four years after Kanjuruhan, my eye will be on four things. First, a formal FIFA-PSSI safety-compliance roadmap — if published, risk falls. Second, accountability outcomes — sanctions, prosecutions, or regulatory measures. Third, FIFA Forward disbursement and milestones — if figures appear, it will show whether reform is advancing. Fourth, stadium-safety incidents at high-intensity matches — any repetition would be the strongest negative signal. I do not predict finals; I audit the assumptions that make finals possible. So too with Kanjuruhan. I am not predicting whether Indonesian football will be safe or not. I am auditing the assumptions on which that safety depends: rules, liability, financing, and time.

The report's accounting ends, but the ledger does not close. The spreadsheet is a monastery, and the whistle is the bell. At Kanjuruhan the whistle sounded on October 1, 2026. But the bell of my accounting has not yet rung — because the ledger has not balanced. The day it balances, perhaps the 135 names will no longer be just names; they will become a rule. Only one question remains: how many more years until that day?