PSM Makassar 2-2 Persita: The 120 Seconds Between Two Goals and a Crack That Hasn't Made Headlines

At the 72nd minute, Ananda Raehan fired the ball into Persita Tangerang's net. PSM Makassar's home ground erupted like a lid blown off a pot. Exactly two minutes later, Tyronne del Pino restored the visitors' lead. Between those two moments there was only a kickoff, a few midfield duels, one vertical pass. No match report recorded the in-between. Yet that in-between is the most telling thing about this 2-2 draw on Matchday 3 of the 2026/2027 BRI Super League.

In the 83rd minute, Stefan Jevtoski equalised for the second time. The score settled at 2-2. Persita led twice, in the 17th and 74th minutes. PSM equalised twice, in the 72nd and 83rd. Indonesian media called it "saling kejar gol" — trading goals. That label is correct about the result and wrong about the nature. This match did not chase itself at random. It leaked according to a pattern, and that pattern repeated exactly twice inside eleven minutes.

The midnight call from Park Yong-woo's mother taught me that football never ends at the whistle. In April 2026, after Incheon United lost 0-5 to Jeonbuk, I spent forty minutes on the phone with a fish vendor at Incheon market. She did not mention a single goal conceded. She asked what her son would eat that night. Since then, whenever I watch a match, I ask myself what is happening between the lines of the result — the place the scoreboard never touches. The second half in Makassar was one of those places.

Context

Only three rounds of the 2026/2027 BRI Super League have been played. The table at this stage resembles a photo taken with an old phone: enough to identify who stands where, not enough to conclude where anyone is heading. Persita Tangerang sit 6th with 5 points from three matches — one win, two draws, unbeaten. PSM Makassar sit 12th with 2 points — two draws, one defeat, no wins.

For a club that has won the Indonesian title and carries one of the largest supporter bases in the country, 12th place after three rounds is an uncomfortable number. Three matches, two points, pushes PSM into the zone Indonesian press calls an early-season crisis. But it must be said plainly from the outset: three matches is far too small a sample to name any trend. What concerns me is not 12th place. What concerns me is how PSM dropped points in this specific match.

On the other side, Persita Tangerang are a mid-table side. A mid-table side travelling to Makassar, leading twice, leaving with one point — that is an acceptable outcome. But the manner in which they surrendered the lead a second time in the 83rd minute deserves weighing too.

One detail must be stated up front: the original report supplied only the result, the goal times and the scorers. No xG. No PPDA. No shot count. No possession figure. No starting formation. For an analyst, this is a thin dataset. I will not invent what is not there. But four timestamps — 17, 72, 74, 83 — are still enough to say something, if one reads them in sequence rather than as a list.

The Core

The 17th-minute opener is the only structurally clear tactical event in the entire match. Rayco Rodriguez shot, the ball struck the crossbar, Aleksa Andrejic converted the rebound. One counterattack, two touches inside the box, and Persita led away from home.

A single instance does not make a style. But it does make a pattern. Persita scored the opener via a counterattack, away from home, in a match where they did not need the ball. That is the profile of a mid-table side that knows what it is. There is no shame in it. Most mid-table teams in Southeast Asia live on precisely this model: concede territory, wait for space behind the opponent's back line, finish through imports.

And here is where it touches a position I have held for years: possession percentage is the most deceptive metric in football. A team that grinds out 60% with sideways passes in its own half does not control the match; it controls the ball, and those are two different things. PSM may well have finished this match with a superior possession figure, if anyone measured it. But they conceded twice at home, and the second concession came immediately after they had just equalised.

That is where the reading must pause.

The 72nd-minute equaliser opened a window. In football, the three-to-five minutes after a goal is the most fragile stretch of the game, especially for the team that has just scored. The scoring team is at an emotional peak, the back line has not yet re-established its distances, the midfield has not dropped back into position, and the attacking players are still standing high. If the opponent restarts deliberately and drives the ball straight at goal in the first two minutes, they strike exactly when the defensive system has not yet closed.

In the 74th minute, Tyronne del Pino did precisely that. Two minutes after Ananda Raehan's equaliser, Persita restored their lead.

This is not a trivial detail. This is a pattern. PSM equalised, then conceded 120 seconds later. Loss of concentration is the easiest and also the laziest explanation. A more structural one: after scoring, the team had nobody responsible for reorganising the defensive block during the window before the ball was back in play. At many clubs, that is the job of a holding midfielder or a leader centre-back — someone with enough voice to drag the whole block ten metres deeper within twenty seconds before the opponent restarts. If PSM do not have that person, this will remain a long-term problem.

Eleven minutes later, Stefan Jevtoski made it 2-2. That goal both rescued PSM from a home defeat and placed a question in front of Persita: why lead twice and still not win?

The answer lies in the 83rd-minute goal. Persita could have won had they sat deeper in the final fifteen minutes. They did not, or did not do it well enough. Protecting a lead away from home is a separate skill, not a natural by-product of playing well. It demands the ability to accept conceding the ball without panicking, the ability to clear toward the touchline rather than through the middle, and the ability to keep the back line deep. Persita showed signs of not yet owning that skillset.

There is one common thread across all four goals in this match: every one of them belonged to, or came from, a foreign player. Andrejic and Rodriguez for Persita; del Pino and Jevtoski for PSM. Ananda Raehan was the only domestic scorer on the night. This is a structural trait of the Indonesian top flight in particular and most Southeast Asian leagues in general: foreign slots are concentrated in the attacking line, while domestic players cover the rest of the pitch. There is nothing new in that observation, but it reminds me of something old: when analysing Southeast Asian football, to learn how a team attacks, read the scorers list before reading the formation diagram.

The Contrarian Angle

The report called this match "saling kejar gol" — two teams trading goals. I read the same sequence of events and see an unbalanced scale.

PSM Makassar did not lead for a single second of this match. They conceded in the 17th minute. They equalised in the 72nd. They conceded again in the 74th. They equalised again in the 83rd. A team that never led and finished with a home point salvaged one point; it did not drop two. If anyone left the stadium with regret, it has to be Persita.

Persita Tangerang led twice away from home. They led from the 17th to the 72nd minute — fifty-five minutes. They led again from the 74th to the 83rd — nine minutes. In the end they took only one point. Across three matches, Persita are unbeaten. On the table, they sit 6th and everything looks fine. On the clock, they dropped two points at a venue where plenty of Indonesian mid-table sides go home empty-handed.

This matters because it redirects the story. If Persita are the side that dropped points, their problem is game management, not squad quality. If PSM are the side that salvaged a point, their problem lies somewhere else entirely: a big club cannot build a season on late equalisers.

I still remember my first morning following Incheon United in 2026. Coach Lee Ki-hyung misread my name over the training-ground loudspeaker, three times, into a different name. I did not correct him. I only smiled, then spent a month reviewing the club's entire footage from the previous season. In that same month, I discovered his 3-5-2 broke down on the left flank whenever midfielder Kim Do-hyuk pushed high. The lesson I took was not about being called the wrong name. The lesson was: to find a pattern, you must review the whole sequence, not just one moment.

Applied here: a 2-2 draw with two concessions around the 73rd minute does not say much. But if the pattern of "conceding within five minutes of scoring" repeats in Matchday 4 and Matchday 5, it stops being a psychological issue. It becomes a structural one. Having been stoned on live television, I still stood by the goalkeeper. The truth needs defenders, not joiners. And the truth here has not been laid bare enough to conclude.

What to Watch

Over the next three rounds, there are three signals I will track. First, whether PSM escape their winless run, and if so, how — through a controlled performance or through another late goal. Second, whether the five-minute window after every PSM goal remains a danger zone. Third, whether Persita learn to hold a lead away from home, or whether 6th place on the table is merely a temporary position concealing a team that has not learned how to close out a match.

At 42, I am old enough to know everything changes, young enough to still believe in one perfect pass. In four months, nobody will remember this 2-2 on Matchday 3. But if PSM are still without a win, people will remember. And when they do, they will have to go back to the stretch between the 72nd and 74th-minute goals — the place no match report recorded.