"Second Best" Foreign Coaches Will Make India Second Best, Not The Best, Believes Pullela Gopichand

National badminton coach Pullela Gopichand feels that a balance of foreign and Indian coaches is important for the system's development in India.

Pullela Gopichand says a good mix of foreign and Indian coaches is important for the development of the system but strongly believes that "second best" overseas recruits will only produce the second best players for India. Speaking at the virtual inauguration of the High-Performance Coach Education Programme, the national badminton coach highlighted the role of coaches in Indian sports. "Foreign coaches are very important for our development. It's very important that we always have a healthy mix of foreign coaches," Pullela Gopichand said. "In sports, where we do not have expertise it is good sometimes to have full foreign support teams in the beginning, but if for successive teams, we are having only foreign coaches then we are not doing justice to our system," Pullela Gopichand added. "It's very important that we learn from them. And we've to gradually wean away from them because they will always be making us the second best, and not the best," Gopichand said.