Five focus points for putting a team together

Considerations of a national team coach:

Five focus points for putting a team together

A number of particularly important decisions must be taken before a national team match. The strongest team composition must be found. Here, you can get an idea of what Denmark’s national team head coach, Kenneth Jonassen, and national assistant coach Jesper Hovgaard, who have the primary responsibility for the men’s and women’s teams, respectively, emphasise when picking the right mix of Denmark’s best badminton players to wear the coveted red and white national team uniform.

By Søren Nielsen

A national team coach wears many hats. Their tasks range from planning how to reach the players’ peak performance level, carrying out training, and of course, coaching for the matches. Optimisation is the key word. The endless hunt for the few percentage points’ improvement that can make the difference between victory and defeat.

Coaches are often seen sitting behind the court, hunched over and carefully pondering how the player can solve the equation and reach the sought-after solution: victory. The wrinkles on the forehead tend to multiply. But they do not reveal themselves solely during the heat of battle. In fact, they often appear much earlier than that.

Each team tie in the Thomas & Uber Cup Finals is made up of three singles and two doubles. All team ties in the preliminary group stage are played to the end, while from the quarterfinals onward, teams duel until one of them reaches the three vital victories necessary to win a team tie as a whole. When the ideal composition of the Danish national team needs to be decided, the coaches confer closely to reach the right choices. Aside from Kenneth Jonassen, who together with Jakob Høi, is primarily responsible for the men’s team, and Jesper Hovgaard, who has the same responsibility for the women’s team, the national coaching team also includes Thomas Stavngaard. Jakob Høi focuses on the men’s doubles category, while Thomas Stavngaard works with the mixed doubles category.

Below are the five elements Jonassen and Hovgaard take into consideration before deciding on the team’s composition.

1 Competitive shape

- The first thing I look at is how the players are doing, in terms of shape. We obviously go with the choices the coaching team believe will look sharpest on the day, notes national team head coach Kenneth Jonassen.

The coaches conduct an ongoing analysis of how the Danish aces are playing prior to, and during, the Thomas & Uber Cup Finals.

- The expected top level for the individual player or pair, and furthermore their bottom level, means everything when the team is being configured, believes Jesper Hovgaard.

In this category the coaches are therefore focused on the players’ own ability and daily performance. This leads us to the second parameter.

2 The opponent

There is, of course, an opponent on the other side of the badminton net, and according to the coaches it is not always unimportant just who the opponent is.

- We also look at which of our players match up best against the potential opponents we expect to face if we have correctly guessed the opposing team’s composition. But it can’t take too much focus away from ourselves and our own game plan, observes Jesper Hovgaard.

Kenneth Jonassen agrees:

- You can have an advantage in advance if you meet an opponent that you’ve already beaten multiple times. It can provide some confidence in adversity if your historical record against the opponent is 2-0 before the match.

- But all our players have to be ready for the potential task ahead of them. So, we use video clips of our opponents to prepare, amongst other things, Jonassen continues.

3 Surprises

Videos are far from the only trick the coaches utilise.

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- In the period leading up to the Thomas & Uber Cup Finals we don’t train in fixed doubles pairs. We do that so the players can try to play a bit back and forth. The players therefore try playing training matches with different partners, says Jonassen.

According to the head coach, there are multiple reasons to do this:

- Among other things, it can be difficult for our opponents to analyse a recently put together pair, and that can create a certain amount of confusion, where the opponent, for good reason, suddenly doesn’t know how our temporary pairs will play. How does the serve situation suddenly look? Where will the return be aimed, and how do they attack? These are elements the opponent has to experience in the moment without any background knowledge, he claims.

Denmark has previously enjoyed great success with its Thomas Cup team by creating new pairs that were otherwise not used to playing together in the individual international tournaments. The coaching team pulled a rabbit out of their hat in both 2016 and 2018, when Mathias Boe together with Mads Conrad and Mathias Christiansen, respectively, played matches together as pairs. Boe and Christiansen won an extremely difficult match in 2018 against Malaysia, when Denmark was playing the group final against them. Before the match, the Thomas Cup team was behind 1-2, so the pressure was at maximum. But Christiansen/Boe kept their cool and won the match in three games, before Jan Ø. Jørgensen secured the victory.

- That situation is really good proof that it can pay off to take the tactical decision to put a new pair together. In 2018 it was Jakob Høi, who was in charge of the men’s doubles, that made the decision at the time. I generally believe that shaking things up can often provide a competitive advantage, but you can’t do it just for the sake of it, says Jonassen, before lifting the veil on the tactical disposition.

- The scenario with Mathias Boe and Mathias Christiansen gave us the chance to get our most experienced player into the second men’s double, together with a young and ambitious Mathias Christiansen. In our judgement, Mathias Boe was the best-performing of our doubles players. So it was a strategic move to put him into play in the second men’s double, and Boe and Christiansen had already played together in a couple of group matches in the 2016 Thomas Cup, he states.

But the national team’s coaches have also experienced that the surprise factor slowly dissipates if a newly formed pair plays together too many times.

- In the end the opponent will start to pick up on how the new pair plays, Jonassen explains.

Injuries

Injuries, on the other hand, are more unpredictable, and can’t always be avoided.

- Little problems as well as injuries naturally also influence how the individual team looks before each match. Particularly for a long tournament like the Thomas Cup. Certain players recover faster than others, and if a player experiences physical problems, it can, of course, be smartest to send the freshest player onto the court. Regrettably, injuries can set some limitations, in terms of which strategic decisions you can pull out of the toolbox. That’s how it will always be in top-level sports, states Jonassen.

- It is therefore important that the player lets us know if something is bothering them. It makes it possible for us to take that into consideration when we select the team, says Jesper Hovgaard.

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5 Experience and confidence

Experience and confidence are also two parameters that play a role in forming the team.

- Those two things have to match each other. Lots of experience doesn’t make a difference if you’re playing badly, and if your confidence is in the gutter, Jonassen declares, before adding:

- The pressure and the stress that an athlete can feel during a team championship is notably different than what they experience at the individual tournaments. If a player has played two or three intense matches in a row, it can sometimes be beneficial for them to take a break. But it’s very valuable to have players that walk confidently onto the court and believe in their abilities unconditionally. If they can simultaneously count on previous experiences in tricky situations, then victory is usually within reach.

Hovgaard adds:

- Beyond that, we continuously consider who will be the best at handling the stressful situations. It makes a big impact in national team ties, and especially this year, as the Thomas Cup is on our home court, he concludes.