New Indonesia coach adopts tough love approach

The 60-year-old Austrian told Reuters he was under no illusions about the size of the task ahead of him but is confident he can quickly whip Indonesia into shape.

"The expectations will be enormous," said Riedl, whose well-travelled coaching career has included spells in charge of Palestine, Vietnam, Laos and his native country.

"I will try to go my own way as in the past - straight, honest and enthusiastic. The players must all pull together 100 percent if they want to be part of the team."

Arguably Riedl's finest achievement was guiding co-hosts Vietnam to the quarter-finals of the 2007 Asian Cup in his third stint as the country's national coach.

He next takes his disciplinarian's rod to football-mad Indonesia, which recently suffered a blow to its pride when FIFA dropped the country from their list of 2022 World Cup bidders.

"With some luck we can be successful in Indonesia too," he said in an e-mail interview after accepting the role of coaching the senior and under-23 sides.

"I flew to Jakarta at the end of January and I'm delighted it's worked out and I am able to take up this new, very difficult job.

"Indonesia has done really well recently at the Asean Cup (three runner-up finishes between 2000-04) but they have had no real success at the Southeast Asian Games."

"Of course the plan is to help Indonesia achieve as much success as possible," added Riedl, who will arrive in Jakarta later this week to begin his new job.

"But I don't want to make any prognosis. I'm still not informed enough about Indonesian football to do that. I do have the goal of making Indonesian football more professional."