Please note that I was 4 years old in 2000, and so my knowledge of that time is very limited
I was referring to the overall strength of the nations, not just their top teams. Perhaps I wasn't clear.
I.e, China have a ridiculous amount of depth now, how does this compare to the Swedish depth of players in 2000?
I never said their team wasn't complete, the key word was "depth"
Obviously Sweden had a stronger and complete first team, they won after all...
Wait, again, are you really saying this?
Total population of China in 2013: 1.4 Billion.
Total population of Sweden in 2013: 9.6 Million.
Are you really serious? I think those numbers mean that China has 145 times higher total population than Sweden.
And if you look at the performance of guys outside of the top 4 in China in international play, there is really a HUGE drop-off in performance. So, from my perspective in spite of how many players China has that are quite good players, there is a reason the top 4 are who they are and guys like Yan An and Fang Bo only had limited success when given the opportunity to step up to the international playing field.
So, for a country 145 times smaller, who didn't scout children from the age of 4 and start them in full 6 hour a day, 6 day a week training by the age of 6, I think Sweden may have had more depth than China.
And again, they won the World Team Table Tennis Championship title against a Chinese team that had 4 guys who could be in the mix for best player of their era:
Ma Lin
Wang Liqin
Liu Gouliang
Kong Linghui
You can't beat that team without real, actual depth. Not just the team but the coaches and the players that pushed them on their way up, in training and in competition when they were coming up.
And again, Waldner beat everyone on that list and the preceding generation of Chinese team players too.
BYW: if you were 4 in 2000 and you want a discussion about the best player in history, I suggest you may as well do your homework.
And I suggest you research Victor Barna. 22 World titles including 5 consecutive WTTC singles titles. That is a decade of total domination. Can you really say that ZJK deserves more recognition when his period of greatness was hot and cold over a period that lasted 2 (that is TWO) whole years?
Would you blame Victor Barna for standing head and shoulders above the rest in an era before people actually knew how to play.
I guess Babe Ruth wasn't as good as Barry Bonds because nobody knew what anabolic steroids were in the 1920s. Let's just forget that he practically invented the home run.
If you look at baseball history, before "The Babe" the standard hitting technique was to chop down at the ball to try and make an awkward bounce that made the ball harder to field. The standard swing in baseball was an outgrowth of Ruth trying to hit the ball over the fence and out of the park. Today's players could not be who they are without the guys like Ruth who came before them.
Barna and Reisman paved the way for Bengsten, and others who paved the way for Persson and Waldner and without them there never would have been a Kong and without Kong there would not have been a Liqin and without Liqin there would not have been a Ma Long. Zhang Jike, I don't know about. He took a technique that most coaches said never to do and showed how he could dominate the game with an over the table BH from the FH side. So he turned some things UpSideDown. (Ha, I like that idea). But FZD may end up making a more lasting impression on the sport than him anyway. Even though he innovated FZD's style.
Anyway, the present rests on the foundations of the past. Let's just appreciate how many great players there have been.
Guys like Primorac, Gatien and Saive also deserve honorable mention for there great play in spite of not having won as many big titles as they could have.
Sent from the Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy