Galatama

Galatama (an acronym for Liga Sepak Bola Utama; English: Premier Football League) was a semi professional football league in Indonesia, established in 1979 by the Indonesian football association, PSSI. Prior the establishment of this competition, an amateur football league namely Perserikatan had been existed since 1931. Therefore, prior to 1994, when both Perserikatan and Galatama were merged into a new system called Liga Indonesia, both competitions existed in parallel.^[1]

History

Until 1979, the Perserikatan is the only national-level competition in Indonesia. The competition is an amateur competition. Starting in 1979, Indonesia Football Association started a semi-professional league, named Liga Sepak Bola Utama (English: Major League Soccer ), shortened to Galatama. Galatama competition is one of the pioneers of professional and semi-professional league in Asia outside Hong Kong League.

Galatama was not divided into several divisions ( except the 1990 season, divided by 2 divisions ).

Until the 1982 season Galatama allow the foreign players, one of the famous foreign players in the competition is Fandi Ahmad (Singapore) which plyaed for the Niac Mitra. He successfully led his club to win the Galatama and awarded as honorary citizen of Surabaya. Unfortunately, after that Fandi Ahmad should get out of Indonesia because of the ban on the use of foreign players in Galatama.

Popularity of Galatama from year to year, began to decline. Especially since the banning foreign players, then the suspicion among some clubs to flirt, then a bribery issue. Galatama not only left the audience, one by one club participants withdrew.

In 1994, Galatama and Perserikatan merged into fully professional Liga Indonesia.

List of champions

(Pelita Jaya won 4-2 in 1990 by penalty shootout)

List of top scorers

References