Champions League yes, Bundesliga no: vote on team
TTC Neu-Ulm, featuring German table tennis star Dimitrij Ovtcharov, is providing a special feature in top European sport this season. On Thursday evening, the star-studded team kicked off the new Champions League season with a 3:0 win at HB Ostrov in the Czech Republic. The club withdrew from the German Table Tennis League and all other German leagues almost seven months ago following a fierce dispute with the governing body TTBL and German champions Borussia Düsseldorf.
This weekend, the German Table Tennis Association (DTTB) will decide whether this special model will still be allowed in the future or whether the Neu-Ulm club will have to stop playing completely after this season. At the DTTB national conference in Frankfurt am Main, a motion will be put to the vote that, from the 2024/25 season, the German association may only register a club for an international competition if it also plays in a national league.
"Now we're playing Champions League as long as we're still allowed to," Neu-Ulm club boss Florian Ebner told the specialist portal "myTischtennis.de".
Last year, the media entrepreneur put together arguably the best team in Europe with former world number one Ovtcharov, Sweden's Truls Möregardh (runner-up at the 2021 World Championships) and Taiwan's Lin Yun-Ju (winner of the WTT tournament in Frankfurt). The team from Neu-Ulm won the German Cup in January and only narrowly lost the Champions League semi-final against Düsseldorf in February. The dispute then escalated.
The German Table Tennis League (TTBL) sentenced Möregardh and Lin to a fine and a ten-match ban for the new 2023/24 season because both had also competed for clubs in Sweden (Möregardh) and Japan (Lin) in January. Neu-Ulm lodged a protest against this and accused record champions Düsseldorf of having influenced the harsh ruling. In August, an arbitration court declared at least the suspensions for both players to be inadmissible. However, the TTC's withdrawal from the Bundesliga had already taken place in February and the admission for the new Champions League season in March.
"We are highly ambitious and absolutely want to win the Champions League this year," said Ebner. The first home game will again take place on Sunday evening against the Czech club Ostrov (7 p.m./sportdeutschland.tv).
Source: www.dpa.com
