Kuala Lumpur: China’s former badminton chief coach, Li Yongbo has been labeled as arrogant and domineering coach and he would do whatever it takes to win matches. He was a controversial figure especially after the match-throwing scandal at the 2012 London Olympics, where he initially laid the blame for the scandal on himself and apologized, then later said he was taking advantage of the rules and the Badminton World Federation (BWF) over-reacted by disqualifying the players.
Regardless of all the negative publicities, Li has achieved remarkable success during his 24-year reign as the Chinese badminton chief coach, leading China to 18 Olympic gold medals,10 Sudirman Cup championships, nine Uber Cups and five Thomas Cup championships. And on Tuesday, former Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) men’s singles coach Rashid Sidek told reporters that BAM should hire Li Yongbo to fill the BAM chief badminton coach spot vacated by Morten Frost.
“Yongbo is very strict on discipline. Players such as Lin Dan and Chen Long have profound respect for him,” said Sidek.
“Countries like China, Japan and South Korea are doing better in conditioning and upbringing of young players compared to Malaysia,” added Sidek.
Sidek commented after Malaysian media has reported BAM president Datuk Seri Norza Zakaria was extremely dissatisfied with Malaysian players’ poor performance at the All England Open last week.
Well, this is nothing new from the BAM management, instead of blaming itself, it will first blame the players when the shuttlers showed subpar results.
BAM should start asking itself whether it has enough coaching talents to nurture players to become world beaters in the senior level? And why did they keep letting go good coaches such as Park Joo Bong, Rexy Mainaky, and most recently, Jeremy Gan who was behind Japanese mixed doubles pair Yuta Watanabe and Arisa Higashino’s historic success by winning Japan’s first ever mixed doubles All England title last Sunday.
