Chengdu (dpa) – Jörg Roßkopf has never been so proud after a lost World Cup final. “This silver shines like gold,” said the coach of the German table tennis team after 0: 3 against host China.
Roßkopf already knows clear final defeats against table tennis superiority from last year’s Olympic Games or the previous 2018 team world championship in Sweden. But the story of this final in Chengdu is completely different. It was a great achievement to get this far with the underdog cast of Dang Qiu, Benedikt Duda and Kay Stumper. So far Roßkopf had only once experienced the vain attempts of the Boll / Ovtcharov generation to dethrone the ruling Chinese.
Only Dang Qiu wins a set
The story of this final is told as quickly as it was feared from the German point of view. Duda lost at the start in 0: 3 sets to world number one Fan Zhendong. European individual champion Dang Qiu won at least the third set in a 1: 3 draw against Olympic champion Ma Long. And 19-year-old world championship rookie Kay Stumper was no longer able to surprise (0: 3) against mixed world champion Wang Chuqin.
“First of all, I am sad. I will realize later how much we have achieved in this tournament,” said Stumper.
The German surprise team had already won two table tennis thrillers in a row in the city of 20 million in western China: 3-2 after 0-2 in the quarter-finals against France. And then Saturday 3: 2 after 1: 2 in the semifinals against a much stronger South Korean.
Chinese team world champions for the tenth consecutive time
However, no one has had a chance against China in table tennis for years. In this team, world number three Liang Jingkun is also just a substitute. The Olympic champions have won the world title for the 10th consecutive time. The last non-Chinese team world champions were Sweden in 2000, 1993, 1991 and 1989.
In Germany, former double world champion Roßkopf has meanwhile achieved what hardly anyone thought possible in recent years: building a team among the best in the world even without European record champion Timo Boll and Olympic bronze medalist Dimitrij Ovtcharov (both in training deficit). As early as 2021, the Germans defended the European title without them. But even then-star Patrick Franziska wasn’t there in Chengdu after the birth of his first child.
Boll “super proud of the boys”
Roßkopf has thus formed a team which, in addition to the strong development of all three players in recent months, lives above all on cohesion. Duda and Dang are also close friends in private. Both were already living together in a flat odd and won the WTT tournament in Qatar last March as a doubles partner. Everything went even faster for Stumper: in 2021 he became European Junior Champion, in 2022 he was hired by the German record champions Borussia Düsseldorf. In this World Cup, he ousted the much more experienced Ricardo Walther (ASV Grünwettersbach) after the third qualifying round match.
“We can all be super proud of the boys. Of course, the final is crazy, ”European record champion Boll said in a video message. But he wants to return to the 2024 Olympic Games himself.
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