NATIONAL badminton legend Lee Chong Wei wants to see an amicable settlement to the spat between the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) and its former junior singles coaching director Misbun Sidek.

However, Lee said it is up to Misbun whether he will accept BAM’s olive branch.

“Let Misbun himself decide. We can’t do anything but at least BAM has done its part. I hope this issue will not be blown up and will be resolved as soon as possible,” he told a press conference yesterday.

Yesterday, BAM president Mohamad Norza Zakaria overruled a task force’s decision and made two offers to Misbun, including to finish his original contract, which ends in December, as junior singles coaching director with the Akademi Badminton Malaysia.

The offers were made to Misbun after the task force, headed by BAM deputy president V. Subramaniam, decided to terminate his service after investigating the national squad’s failure at the Asian Junior Championships 2023 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, last month.

On Friday, Subramaniam said Misbun and BAM had mutually agreed to part ways.

But on Monday, Misbun disputed Subramaniam’s statement, saying his service was terminated after he attended a post-mortem meeting on the Yogyakarta failure.

The national squad performed poorly in Yogyakarta, losing to defending champions Thailand 3-0 in the quarter-finals of the mixed team competition and failing to enter the semi-finals of the individual events.

Subramaniam said the task force was not targeting Misbun, and that it will evaluate coaches by category (singles, doubles, etc). – Bernama, August 3, 2023.