The TTC Neu-Ulm is withdrawing from the table tennis Bundesliga after only four years and wants to concentrate solely on the Champions League with players like Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the future. The club announced this on Thursday in a press release and in a letter to the league association TTBL.
The Neu-Ulmer did not apply for a Bundesliga license in the next season just before the deadline and this step further escalated a dispute with the TTBL and with the German champions Borussia Düsseldorf.
“We very much regret that the club no longer wants to apply for a Bundesliga license,” said league manager Nico Stehle of the German Press Agency. “But the club has shown on several occasions that they don’t care about the league. They also don’t respect the league as an institution that protects its rules.”
The background to this dispute is a ten-game suspension for the two Neu-Ulm players Truls Moregardh and Lin Yun-Ju. The club had signed the vice world champion from Sweden, the world number eight from Taiwan, the Olympic bronze medalist Ovtcharov and the Japanese Tomokazu Harimoto before this season, especially for the Champions League and the cup competition, in the Bundesliga there are three young Russians in particular player to use.
Because Moregardh and Lin were still playing for different clubs abroad in January, the TTBL sentenced them to a fine and a long-term ban that will not apply until the coming season. The league’s argument is: TTC Neu-Ulm deliberately broke the rules. The club, on the other hand, lodged a protest against the bans before an arbitral tribunal, mainly because it considers the effectiveness only in the next season to be disproportionate.
Since a verdict from the arbitral tribunal can only be expected in six to eight weeks, the club is currently unable to plan a squad for the coming Bundesliga season. This is how the Neu-Ulmer justify their withdrawal from the top German league. On the other hand, they would like to sign contracts for the Champions League. There, the bans on Moregardh and Lin do not apply. And there, with the help of a wild card from the European association ETTU, the club could also compete as a second or third division team in the future.
“TTC Neu-Ulm would rather make contracts for the Champions League with Moregardh and Lin than sign them abroad in the next few weeks,” says the club’s press release. In this message, the cup winner and Champions League semi-finalist also renewed his allegations against the TTBL and the record champions from Düsseldorf.
“With the signing of Dima Ovtcharov, Tomokazu Harimoto, Lin Yun-Ju and Truls Moregardh, TTC Neu-Ulm went from being a league player to a competitor to Borussia Düsseldorf,” it said. “Their manager is also the chairman of the supervisory board of the TTBL. Since last summer, the TTC Neu-Ulm has seen the conflict of interest that actually exists with him as a use of power to exert influence against the TTC Neu-Ulm.”
Borussia manager Andreas Preuss and the league association had sharply rejected this accusation on Wednesday.