Dhe World Table Tennis Team Championship, which begins this Friday in Busan, is of great importance for the hosts. South Korea is hosting a World Cup for the first time – even though the country has always been one of the largest table tennis nations and has produced the last non-Chinese individual Olympic champion, Ryu Seung-Min. The tournament is at least as important for German table tennis, especially for the men's team.
It is important to show that the team, ranked second in the world, will also be China's number one challenger at the Olympic Games in Paris. With the exception of 2016, Germany has always reached the World Cup final in the past 14 years – and always lost to China. Judging by the words of old master Timo Boll, reaching the final is not just a goal, but a duty. “None of us would be happy if we didn’t make it to the final,” he said.
Germans expect “Fifty-Fifty Games”
National coach Jörg Roßkopf goes even further, emphasizing that China as a team is “strong, but not unbeatable”. That's exactly what German number one Dang Qiu apparently believes his team can do, saying: “I don't know if Germany has ever taken such a strong team to a World Cup.” He may be right about that, as he is the current player next to him European champions the Olympic record medalist Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Patrick Franziska, known as the “China scare”, Benedikt Duda and Boll the German team. Although Boll will miss the first game against the USA due to inflammation of the iris in his right eye. A visit to the doctor will reveal whether Boll can intervene later in the tournament.
However, on the way to the desired final, France, Sweden, Taiwan, Japan or South Korea, which have improved enormously in terms of playing quality in recent years, could pose major challenges for the German team. Ovtcharov also knows this, who calls these possible duels “fifty-fifty games”. “I think a lot of surprises can happen.”
There was a nasty surprise for the 35-year-old before the tournament even started. As he said, on Monday on the way to the airport, all of his luggage, including his racket, was stolen, which meant he was only able to arrive a day later. However, the group phase, in which 40 nations compete, should be less dramatic for the German team. Little resistance is expected from their opponents England, USA, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia.
This World Cup is not just about medals. The Summer Olympics are already everywhere. The German team has not yet qualified for Paris. To do this, it would have to reach at least the quarter-finals at this World Cup; in the event of an earlier failure, qualification would be possible via the team world rankings.
“It’s never been so competitive”
But the question is much more exciting: Who is actually allowed to go to Paris? It has never been more difficult to answer this question. All five World Cup participants are vying for just two individual and three team starting places as well as the position of substitute player. “It has never been as competitive as this year,” says Jörg Roßkopf to the FAZ
Timo Boll in particular has to worry about his participation in the Olympics, and not just in the individual competition. After a long injury break and fluctuations in performance in 2023, he was able to set an exclamation mark with the tournament victory in Doha a few weeks ago. But despite his extreme jump in the world rankings from 182nd to 44th, he is still far away from Qiu (10th place), Ovtcharov (13th) and Franziska (26th).
According to Roßkopf, the nomination criteria “have nothing to do with the world rankings”. “The performance of the last few months, how who plays against whom in an international comparison, those are the criteria,” he explains. The two players for the individual competition should be determined internally at the end of March and beginning of April.
“We don’t have as many opportunities to recommend ourselves now. “That’s why the World Cup will be very crucial,” says Boll. The national coach, on the other hand, downplays the importance of the World Cup, describing it as a tournament “like the ones that followed”.
German ladies in Busan
The German women compete in Busan with much less pressure of expectation. The bronze medalists from the previous 2022 World Team Championships also secured Olympic qualification with the 2023 European Championship title. But the Achilles tendon rupture that German star Ying Han suffered in January is clouding the mood. Their participation in Paris is more than questionable, even if sporting director Richard Prause considers it “not entirely ruled out”.
The loss of the ninth in the world rankings shouldn't even affect the goals for this World Cup. The minimum goal is to survive the group phase and reach the quarter-finals in the next step. In the group, the German team around Nina Mittelham, Xiaona Shan, Annett Kaufmann, Sabine Winter and Yuan Wan will face viable opponents from Slovakia, Poland, Nigeria and Mexico as third in the seeding list.
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