Indonesia will launch an interim football league at the end of this month, an official said Monday, as the game struggles to survive an ongoing crisis in the Southeast Asian nation.

Indonesia has been without a national football competition for the better part of a year, after a feud between the country's soccer association and its sports ministry saw the top-grade tournament suspended.

Talks failed to break the impasse and in May the sport's global governing body FIFA banned Indonesia from international football -- a suspension that still hasn't been lifted.

The head of the new league, Joko Driyono, told AFP the competition -- named the Torabika Soccer Championship after its main sponsor -- would not replace Indonesia's regular top-grade tournament but was a temporary substitute while the crisis remained unresolved.

The championship will involve 18 teams, including top-flight clubs Arema, Persib Bandung and Semen Padang, and already has the blessing of President Joko Widodo and the sports minister, Driyono said.

A spokesman for the sports minister said Driyono approached them with the idea last week, and they didn't object.

"If there's a competition now, we will accept it," the spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto said.

"The president has already said there should be a total reform of football, that it needs to be better (than it is now)."

The first match will be played in Jayapura in Indonesia's easternmost province of Papua on Friday, April 29. Widodo is expected to attend, Gatot said.

Indonesia last week threw its hat in the ring to host the 2023 AFC Asian Cup, despite the country being under the FIFA ban.