COLUMBUS – First off, let there be no doubt that Maarten Paes earned his place and then some at MLS All-Star.
FC Dallas’ goalkeeper has been one of the league’s very best since arriving on these shores in 2022. This season he ranks among the MLS elite in saves, save percentage, pass completion rate and shots on target against, helping keep FCD afloat during the sustained struggles that led to coach Nico Estévez’s departure last month. He’s also been a tough out on spot kicks, saving five of the 14 penalties he’s faced over his first 102 regular-season matches.
“He's one of the key players in our team. First of all, he's a great guy off the field and on the field he's a great professional, a really good player,” his Dallas teammate and fellow All-Star Petar Musa said after the All-Stars’ training session at the OhioHealth Performance Center on Tuesday. “He showed during the season his quality and he deserves to be here.”
Yet outstanding stats aren’t always enough to get an All-Star nod, considering the rising tide of boldfaced names in the league and the influence that can have on the fan vote. That’s where Indonesia comes in.
Community & loyalty
Born and raised in the Netherlands, Paes carries Indonesian heritage via his maternal grandmother, Nel Appels-van Heyst. She was born in Kediri, East Java and spent most of her childhood in the southeast Asian nation back when it was a colonial territory known as the Dutch East Indies. As the Dallas Morning News and 3rdDegree.net detailed earlier this year, she and her family suffered greatly during the Japanese occupation, losing her mother and spending two years in an internment camp.
Paes’ grandmother educated him about those chapters in the family’s history as he grew up in Nijmegen, and her heritage qualified him for the Indonesian citizenship process he completed earlier this year after an approach from Indonesia’s soccer federation (PSSI), whose current chairman Erick Thohir – former majority owner of D.C. United – has led a global search for dual-nationality players to fortify the nation’s player pool.
His switch of eligibility to play for Tim Garuda still hinges on a FIFA appeal process being considered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, as Paes represented the Netherlands at youth level and the question of whether he’s cap-tied hinges on the interpretation of complicated language in FIFA statutes. But he’s already been enthusiastically welcomed by the large, passionate soccer fanbase in the world’s fourth-most populous country, who turned out the vote to ensure he got his All-Star nod.
“They have a big community, and yeah, since I'm part of that community, they've been very loyal, very loyal,” said Paes, who also addressed recent reports of transfer interest from Italian Serie A side Empoli, on Monday. “It's been amazing. Yeah, I can't wait to play for them as well. I see them supporting me and our club.
“I think they're very excited; they've already been telling me for three years. I would like to also think that I'm playing good on the pitch, but I think it's a good combination of the both of them. I can't wait to give them back with some good performances and with a big smile this week.”
Just how large is the scale of Indonesian interest?
“FC Dallas’ Instagram post announcing Paes’ inclusion has garnered 417,000 Likes, 4,400 comments and 424,000 engagements,” FCDallas.com's Garrett Melcer explained last week. “To give those social media numbers some context, that post has more engagements than all other MLS teams’ All-Star announcements combined (71,100 engagements), more than the Texas Rangers’ post after winning the World Series last year (417,000 engagements), and nearly as many as the LA Dodgers’ post announcing the signing of megastar Shohei Ohtani (461,000).”
World Cup dreams
That’s probably a factor in Paes enjoying nearly 700,000 Instagram followers – and he felt it firsthand when he traveled to Jakarta to complete his naturalization and receive his passport, finding himself flocked by legions of adoring fans when he walked the streets.
“When I went there in May to finalize everything, it was a bit overwhelming, because I'm a very grounded and humble person,” he admitted on Tuesday. “It’s amazing, of course – just more people to show up for.”
He’s hopeful of gaining his eligibility in time to make his Indonesia debut in their September World Cup qualifiers vs. Saudi Arabia and Australia. It’s a milestone that will carry even more emotional weight because of his love for his grandmother, who passed away in February, but not before encouraging him to complete his switch and help the nation of her birth as they seek their second-ever World Cup berth, and their first since competing in 1938 as the Dutch East Indies.
“Nothing happens without a reason, and I really felt I had to do this for her. They’d already been asking me for three years and then this year felt like the right moment, right time,” Paes told MLSsoccer.com. “The last couple of months that I spent with my grandmother were about this project, and I could show her some of the stories when I was there in the offseason. So yeah, that was amazing and then one month after, she passed away, so it was kind of like a full-circle moment.”
He’s allowing himself to dream big – like backstopping his adopted country’s return to the world stage, perhaps even at AT&T Stadium, the venue just a short drive down the freeway from his home that will host nine matches in the 2026 tournament.
“With the World Cup coming here and the qualifiers, I believe I can play a huge role in that,” Paes said. “If I will play a World Cup game in Dallas, for example, with Indonesia? It's going to be amazing.”
