Kuala Lumpur: The president of Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM), Datuk Seri Mohamad Norza Zakaria said former chief coach of the China badminton team, Li Yongbo is certainly one of the candidates to fill the BAM technical director position vacated by Morten Frost, as the Denmark badminton legend tendered his resignation on Sept 11, 2017 citing personal reasons.
However, Zakaria further explained that any changes to the BAM coaching structure would only take place after the Thomas Cup and Uber Cup finals in Bangkok, Thailand this May.
“Everything is possible. I have been the BAM president for one year, but frankly, our players were not showing much improvement since the Sudirman Cup last year,” said Zakaria.
Zakaria stressed that he would reinstate the technical director position if BAM shuttlers showed no obvious improvement three months from now.
“We will re-evaluate the current coaching structure if there’s still no signs of improvement,” added Zakaria.
Zakaria also told reporters after the emergency meeting held on Tuesday that any coaches or players who failed to meet the performance targets set by BAM within the three months period will be dropped from the national squad.
“You know I’m really disappointed with the performance of the players at All England. I called all the head coaches today and told them within three months, all players must show clear improvements, or they will be dismissed.”
“It’s sad to see when we sent our players to compete abroad, they lost early without any guilt, and then uploaded a bunch of pictures to their social media site as if they were enjoying a free trip abroad, and that has to stop.”
In order to strengthen the Malaysian Thomas Cup squad men’s doubles department, Zakaria also announced that BAM has invited former BAM players including Azriyn Ayub, Arif Latif and Lim Khim Wah to join the Malaysian Thomas Cup training camp.
“We are worried about our men’s doubles performance, so we invited these outside players to try out with the national team for three months. That means that they also have the chance to be listed in the Thomas Cup squad if they really show good results,” added Zakaria.
Note to BAM: BAM should realize that Malaysia has a lot of talents in men’s singles and men’s doubles, but it’s BAM’s system that failed to nurture these players to become world beaters in the senior level.
