Almost Bankrupt, Rans Cilegon FC Rises in the Hands of New Owners.

Almost Bankrupt, Rans Cilegon FC Rises in the Hands of New Owners.

Exactly on April 1, the football club that competed in the Indonesian League 2, Cilegon United was officially acquired by a well-known presenter from Indonesia named Raffi Ahmad, former president of Cilegon United Yudia Priyanto said that the reason for selling Cilegon United to Nagita Slavina's husband was none other than to save the club from bankruptcy.

Since 2017 Cilegon United FC has indeed started to be hit by financial problems, from corruption issues involving the former Mayor of Cilegon Iman AAryadi, the club nicknamed The Volcano is also no longer sponsored by the company. Whereas before these problems appeared Cilegon United could still play in the Indonesian League, Yudi himself was quite sad when he had to let Cilegon United go.

The club which was founded in 2015 started as an amateur club and was still financed by the local government until finally being able to appear in the Indonesian League 2 in 2020, trying to rise from adversity but unfortunately The Volcano's efforts did not produce results, from field problems that were difficult to practice, the President also find it difficult to find sponsorship funds. The situation at that time was truly on the verge of collapse, if not rescued immediately until Yudi finally made a decision instead of seeing the club he had built crumble, he chose to release the club to RANS Entertainment and Prestige Motocars on March 30, 2021.

Rans is a company owned by Raffi Ahmad and Nagita Slavina while Prestige is a supercar dealer from North Jakarta, after being acquired the name Cilegon United changed to RANS Cilegon FC. Not only changing the name RANS Cilegon FC also using a new logo, RANS Cilegon FC has a phoenix logo which when interpreted is he has hope that the Club can last a long time and continue to grow.

Through his personal Instagram account, the new owner revealed that the phoenix is ​​a symbol of immortality, a symbol of the long eternal cycle of life and a symbol of the resurrection of the messenger bird itself is a kind of legendary firebird in sacred Egyptian mythology, this bird is said to be able to live for a long time.

In addition to the name and logo that have changed so far, RANS Cilegon also announced that they will provide one of the plus facilities to players that are equivalent to European club standards, the news was conveyed directly by Gilang Widya Pramana as the leader of skipper99 who is the sponsor of RANS Cilegon FC.

Raffi Ahmad as the owner of RANS Cilegon wants to bring the club to appear in the highest division of the Indonesian competition, but he doesn't want to quickly set a target that is too high, he still wants to improve the club from the bottom starting from infrastructure to facilities for players, so that what planned to work well in the future.

In an interview, Raffi Ahmad revealed that the target he had set for his first club was as it was his will, he would build a quality football academy, paying attention to all the things that are really needed so that later every player who participates in training will come out as a graduate with the best quality.

Next he wants to build a soccer field according to FIFA standards through his colleague Rudy Salim, Rangers Cilegon presented a plan to build a FIFA standard football facility which will be built in a beautiful beach area with an area of ​​​​about 2.7 hectares, later an Academy will be built to a football school.

Even though it seems that he will have a bright future, at this point Raffi Ahmad got opposition from the fans, the Cilegon fans are indeed proud of the plan set by Raffi Ahmad but they regret that the homebase has to be moved to Jakarta. The fans were worried because of concerns that Cilegon United's cage would be moved after it was acquired by Raffi Ahmad. If they moved, which team would they support, they hoped not to move and they really support this acquisition.

The next plan is for RANS Cilegon to build an indoor club field, they revealed that they will build an indoor field with various sports facilities ranging from futsal to badminton.

After all the initial plans had been submitted, it arrived at the ranks of important figures involved in Club RANS Cilegon FC after and the names of Raffi Ahmad and also Rudy Salim there was Rufi Ardian who was appointed president of RANS Cilegon, Yudi Aprianto who now serves on the advisory board after no longer being president Cilegon United, as well as Hamka Hamzah who was the manager of the team, then there was Bambang Nurdiansyah who was appointed as head coach and was given the responsibility to manage the team at the Academy level.

In the list of players themselves, RANS Cilegon has released 30 players The players who have been selected to be included in the competition on the list include a number of names from Cristian Gonzales to former, Syamsir Alam, Fadilla Akbar, Fikri Ntong, Tarik El Janaby, Kartika Aji to Hamka Hamzah who is also a player and team manager.

The appearance of RANS Cilegon in the Indonesian football scene instantly created a new charm, in fact it was reported that there were already as many as 40 companies queuing up to become sponsors of Raffi Ahmad and Rudy Salim's club. In addition, there were many comments that appeared after RANS Cilegon FC was inaugurated, the club even had time to become the topic of the most lively discussion on social media Twitter, not a few who said that Bilaran Cilegon would become a new force in Indonesian football, even some of them said that RANS Cilegon will soon follow in the footsteps of German club RB Leipzig, which has no history and tends to be moral and financially strong but can create extraordinary dominance.

Will RANS Cilegon FC be like RB Leipzig or become the Manchester City of Indonesia? We will see his progress in the Indonesian League and the Asian Champions League in the future.