Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian badminton icon Lee Chong Wei has warned on Friday that some Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) players who have repeatedly underperformed would soon be seeing their careers in BAM come to an end.
The 36-year-old former World No. 1 player told reporters that despite strong support from coaches and numerous chances given to these players, their performance has again and again been subpar.
“They are no longer young players, they are 23 or older. They should know what is needed from them, but instead, they have remained stagnant,” said Lee.
“I know that BAM has decided to axe some players, but final decision still rests with the coaches,” added Lee.
Meanwhile, BAM’s men’s singles head coach Misbun Sidek agreed with Lee that some of his players have failed to live up to expectations but has denied of any plans to get rid of these players.
“Chong Wei was right, some players have been showing very slow improvements over the years,” said Sidek.
“But I am not aware of any plans to drop them,” added Sidek.
“It’s probably based on Chong Wei’s personal observation.”
“After I took over the singles department last year, it’s my goal to turn bad players into good ones, and I did not give up on them. These players train really hard, but just can’t seem to deliver at international tournaments.”
“Also, we can’t just drop these players or else, who are going to spar with our younger players? Because we only have 11 players in the men’s singles department.”
BadmintonPlanet has paid close attention to the behavior of some of these underperformed players through online channels and realized that some of them were emotionally immature on how they responded to constructive criticism on social media compared to players from China and Japan who could really handle criticism well.
The lack of maturity from these Malaysian players was definitely one of the key factor that caused them to underperform. But, as BadmintonPlanet has stated many times, BAM has to fundamentally revamp the whole badminton system in Malaysia, as these are very talented players, and they have proven their worth during their junior years, but BAM has yet to create an effective system to help push them to be world beaters at the elite level.
