Kurniawan Dwi Yulianto

Primavera years

Kurniawan became a household name in Indonesia when he went on a scoring spree for the Indonesian youth team that went to Italy in 1993 to train at Serie A club Sampdoria and play in the Campionato Nazionale Primavera, the league for youth teams of Serie A and Serie B clubs. The Indonesian football association PSSI sent the team abroad for two years to prepare for the 1994 AFC Youth Championship in Jakarta and the qualifying round for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Kurniawan was so prolific that Sampdoria's coach at that time, Sven-Göran Eriksson, included the 18-year old in the team that toured Asia in 1994, along with superstars Roberto Mancini and Attilio Lombardo who just won the 1993–94 Coppa Italia title.

FC Luzern

Kurniawan's performance in the Primavera league and with Sampdoria in exhibition matches caught the attention of other European clubs, including Swiss top-tier club FC Luzern that signed him on loan for the 1994–95 season. Kurniawan scored three goals in his 12 appearances for the Lucerne-based club, a respectable result for any teenager with no previous professional career. Kurniawan is the first and only Indonesian national who has scored in a top-flight European league. He was also the only Indonesian who competed at the UEFA Intertoto Cup, which was abolished in 2008. Despite such achievements, young Kurniawan suffered homesickness, culture shock, and injuries in Switzerland. Sampdoria in 1995 called him back from the loan…

Outside his dark years in the late 1990s, Kurniawan has always been the top choice for the youth and senior Indonesian national football teams from 1993 to 2005. With 33 goals in 59 appearances for the senior team, he has collected more caps and goals than any other Indonesian, except Bambang Pamungkas who also played in Malaysia when Kurniawan was there. His first three goals were scored against Cambodia in a 10–0 rout in the 1995 Southeast Asian Games in Thailand.

After Kurniawan retired as a player in late 2013, he chose to become a coach at the new Chelsea Soccer School Indonesia, which is supported by English Premier League club Chelsea F.C. despite approaches from Indonesian clubs. One reason was the position did not require him to stay in Indonesia for long stretches as he wanted to spend more time in Malaysia, where his Malaysian wife opens a restaurant business. The pressure of training an Indonesian professional team throughout most of the year would take him away for too long. After approaches by PSSI and national team coaches, Kurniawan agreed to be a part-time assistant coach for Indonesian youth teams, including the U-23 team that won silver at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games in the Philippines. Newly promoted Malaysia Super League club Sabah FC became the first club that hired Kurniawan as a head coach in December 2019. The decision followed the inability of the previous coach Jelius Ating to lead a top-tier team due to his lack of AFC Pro coaching license, which Kurniawan holds. Kurniawan's first season at Sabah reaped mixed reviews from club decision-makers with some applauding the first-time head coach for keeping the team out of relegation while some criticizing him for only winning two out of 11 matches played in the shortened 2020 Malaysia Super League season amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The latter group managed to push Kurniawan out in November 2020. However, a change of management leadership at the club led to a…

Kurniawan mostly resides in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia where his second wife opened a restaurant business that has several outlets. Kurniawan met her when he was playing for Sarawak FA in 2005, two years after his divorce from his first wife.