Table tennis
TTC Neu-Ulm: Only Champions League games will be banned in the future
Former world number one Dimitrij Ovtcharov is part of the TTC Neu-Ulm super team. photo
© Joaquim Ferreira/dpa
The best table tennis team in Europe only plays in the Champions League, but no longer in the Bundesliga. It has now been decided: the Neu-Ulm model may no longer exist in the future.
The ambitious one The table tennis project of the TTC Neu-Ulm and its top player Dimitrij Ovtcharov will probably be history after this season.
The Bundestag of the German Table Tennis Association (DTTB) decided with a large majority in Frankfurt am Main that from the coming season no German teams will be allowed to register for the Champions League if they have previously been withdrawn from the Bundesliga or another national league.
That’s exactly what the Neu-Ulm team is doing this season: They are competing in the most important European club competition with the former world number one Ovtcharov, the Swede Truls Möregardh and the Taiwanese Lin Yun-Ju, although they are competing after a dispute with the league association TTBL and the German champions Borussia Düsseldorf had already declared their withdrawal from the Bundesliga in February. The German cup winners also no longer registered a new team for the 2nd Bundesliga or the regional league.
Most recently, multiple wildcards from the ETTU
The new regulation is intended to prevent “German table tennis clubs from withdrawing from playing at the national level in order to pool resources solely for participation in international competitions,” said DTTB Vice President Heike Ahlert. “That would inevitably divert resources that would otherwise be used for table tennis in Germany and thus lead to a less attractive overall German league.”
Due to its sporting successes and the attractive team, the TTC Neu-Ulm has received a Champions League wildcard from the European association several times in the past. The ETTU did not object to the club’s withdrawal from the Bundesliga. According to the statutes, every German European Cup participant must also be registered by the DTTB. And so far there has been no passage in its rules of play that regulates a case like that of the Ovtcharov team.