Kurniawan Dwi Yulianto

Kurniawan Dwi Yulianto (born 13 July 1976 in Magelang, Central Java) is an active Indonesian footballer. He normally plays as a striker and is the player with the most caps and goals for the Indonesian national team after Bambang Pamungkas with 31 goals in 60 appearances.^[1]

Kurniawan is known by his nickname kurus (literally means "skinny" or "slim") because he cuts a slender figure. One of his finest moments was at the 2004 Tiger Cup, during the semifinal match between Malaysia and Indonesia. Indonesia was trailing by one goal at half time (2 goals by aggregate), but Indonesia managed to conjure up an impressive comeback which started when Kurniawan scored a goal. Indonesia went on to win the match 4–1 and advanced to the final of the competition before losing to the Singaporean national football team.

He is one of an elite few Indonesian football players that have plied their trade in Europe. For a brief period in his career, he played for Sampdoria Primavera. He later played for FC Lucerne of the Swiss Football League for two seasons in the mid 1990s. After a moderately successful first season, he was subsequently sent back to Indonesia because of a combination of injuries, loss of form, a cap on non-EU players in the Swiss League, and an alleged addiction to night life and drugs. He is the first Indonesian footballer to have played in the Intertoto Cup and to have scored in that competition. In addition, he has also taken part in the Asian Champions League as well as the now-defunct Asian Cup Winner's Cup.

In the late 1990s, Kurniawan was caught on the wrong end of a drug scandal which resulted in his expulsion from the national team. But shortly after, he was rehabilitated, exonerated, and reinstated in the team. He is currently playing for PSMS Medan. Other Indonesian football teams he played for include PSM, PSPS, Persebaya, Persija, PSS, Persela and Persisam. He twice won the Indonesian Football League, the first in 2000 with PSM, and the second in 2004 with Persebaya. He was the runner-up on the top-scorer chart in 2000 with 23 goals, trailing Bambang Pamungkas by 1 goal. During the 97–98 season, he was the runaway leader on the temporary goal-scorer chart when the league was called off due to a serious match-fixing scandal and the general collapse of security in Indonesia in the aftermath of the Asian economic crisis. Barring the World Cup, Asian Games and the Olympics (which Indonesia never managed to qualify for during his playing career), Kurniawan has participated in virtually all tournaments and competitions at various regional levels that Indonesia is eligible to take part in, including the Pre-Olympics Qualifier, Pre-World Cup Qualifier, SEA Games, Tiger Cup (now known as AFF Cup), and Asian Cup.

Football analysts in Indonesia agree that ever since coming back to play in Indonesia, Kurniawan never achieved the same level of quality like he did when he was still in Europe. Much hope was placed on his shoulders, as well as the shoulders of his teammates who belonged in the Primavera team (the Indonesian junior team which trained for two years in Italy and was poised to qualify to the 1996 Olympics before getting eliminated by South Korea) to lift up the quality and achievement of the Indonesian national football team. That hope was dashed when Kurniawan (and the rest of the Primavera boys) proved to be somewhat of a letdown when it came to delivering for the national team, which was evident following a series of failures at Southeast Asian as well as Asian tournaments. Nonetheless, he was a permanent fixture in the Indonesian national football team for a long time. To this day, he remains one of the most recognizable names in the history of Indonesian football. ^[2]

References

External links

• Kurniawan Dwi Yulianto at National-Football-Teams.com