European Team Championships 2017

i`m fully supporting Michal ....
There is no problem if they come to play from different country then they own .... but i`m against the think they can represent the visiting country ... but i think it is a shame of the country which ask they to play for them ... i do not think is their fault ..everyone want to play and stay better... But anyway ... i still think there are plenty of non country representative tournaments where they can play and be in the country they want.

TTFrenzy said:

I cant speak for other countries since I dont live there but Kalinikos Kreanga and Giannis Antetokounmpo became officially "greeks" or greeks (it does not matter) literally during a single night.

So people either they are passionate patriots or not, should not forget sports is as everything a big business where tons of money are made. So please stick tothe big picture here

As far as I am concerned kalinikos would be miserable/unhappy in Romania because of the regime and most likely he wouldnt have made the career he made. We will never know and it does not matter.

One could also say that in the past 15 years he is more french than greek or romanian, he does not visit greek much unless there are training camps for kids where he is supervisor and can make some money. Who cares anyway, stick to enjoying TT and your favorite players.

Same goes for Antetokounmpo (born in greece from nigerian parents) he would still probably be selling lighters,small decorating magnets, cd's in greece to earn 5 or 6 euros per day if some coaches didnt decide to give all they have got to nurture his basketball talent.

So in the end what we see for all migrating athletes is a combination of personal or parental or coaching choices to change environment and talent/hard systematic training . Countries have nothing to do with it

Click to expand...

Yeah. All Nigerians do in Greece is sell lighters and other such stuff. Thanks for your great awareness.

bobpuls said:

but i`m against the think they can represent the visiting country

Click to expand...

It's not visiting country. It's their country too, once they have citizenship.

NextLevel said:

Yeah. All Nigerians do in Greece is sell lighters and other such stuff. Thanks for your great awareness.

Click to expand...

relax you are too sensitive about this issue for your brains. I never said there is something wrong with selling lighters jesus christ I know how hard it is to make a living. nor did I imply that all black people or nigerians just sell lighters and cd's.

It was gianni's way to make a living and that's the only reason I mentioned it. You have derailed my point here

TTFrenzy said:

relax you are too sensitive about this issue for your brains. I never said there is something wrong with selling lighters jesus christ I know how hard it is to make a living. nor did I imply that all black people or nigerians just sell lighters and cd's.

It was gianni's way to make a living and that's the only reason I mentioned it. You have derailed my point here

Click to expand...

What you never said is culturally insensitive. But it's okay. Illegal immigrants also have aspirations. They don't always need saviors or angels.

NextLevel said:

What you never said is culturally insensitive. But it's okay. Illegal immigrants also have aspirations. They don't always need saviors or angels.

Click to expand...

Nobody talked about saviors. His own parents didnt want giannis to play. Read some facts first before accusing. I talked about coaches. No saviors no angels. I said it before that what we see is a combination of personal parental and coaching decisions. And u dont know me well enough to judge if what i said was culturally insensitive. There is nothing wrong to sell stuff in the street . But its much much better to make millions doing something you love. You can draw whatever conclusion u like
. It does not matter anyway

TTFrenzy said:

Nobody talked about saviors. His own parents didnt want giannis to play. Read some facts first before accusing. I talked about coaches. No saviors no angels. I said it before that what we see is a combination of personal parental and coaching decisions. And u dont know me well enough to judge if what i said was culturally insensitive. There is nothing wrong to sell stuff in the street . But its much much better to make millions doing something you love. You can draw whatever conclusion u like
. It does not matter anyway

Click to expand...

I hardly need to know you - the way you wrote what you wrote speaks for itself. There are ways people who are sensitive to what stereotypes imply speak and write when talking about other cultures, especially on public forums. And those who are deliberately being insensitive have no problem with it. The distinction between how you wrote about Kreanga and his prospects and how you wrote about Giannis speaks for itself.

There is nothing wrong with being culturally insensitive until the people you have offended point it out or get cowered by it. And you don't have to apologize either - Trump is not apologizing and neither have others. I doubt that I am that politically correct myself. English may not be your language of greatest fluency. But what you wrote something that could be improved and it is better you know it than you don't.

NextLevel said:

I hardly need to know you - the way you wrote what you wrote speaks for itself. There are ways people who are sensitive to what stereotypes imply speak and write when talking about other cultures, especially on public forums. And those who are deliberately being insensitive have no problem with it. The distinction between how you wrote about Kreanga and his prospects and how you wrote about Giannis speaks for itself.

There is nothing wrong with being culturally insensitive until the people you have offended point it out or get cowered by it. And you don't have to apologize either - Trump is not apologizing and neither have others. I doubt that I am that politically correct myself. English may not be your language of greatest fluency. But what you wrote something that could be improved and it is better you know it than you don't.

Click to expand...

I didnt apologize, u misunderstood, I made my point more crystal than crystal clear even if my english are not fluent enough to be accurate like yours.

You are missing the big picture here, read again all of my posts , out of all I have wrote you continue to persist about the lighters cd's and the insensitiveness of my intentions and way to express and "distinct" the two stories.

You dont know me, you dont have a clue and the same goes for me as well. but you can keep trying like you know.


Im not responsible of what you understood, Im responsible of what I said. . Νow even if my english are not good enough to be accurate to prove my exact point then Im terribly sorry about the misunderstanding and the level of my english, but I ve stated that it is not a matter of countries/race, its a matter of choices and the money/opportunities involved in sports for people like kreanga or antetokounmpo or whatever I just used greek examples because I followed them for years, hell I probably know that giannis existed long before nigerians nba or greeks discovered him.

Personally I dont give a shit if he is black or pink, I like him the same as I like westbrook, iverson, rodman , john paxson steve kerr and larry bird, so please keep your lecturing for those truly in need.

If you cant or dont want to grasp all of the above , then maybe I should really start telling uncle tom and corn field plantation jokes to show you the YUGE difference between cultural insensitivity and just analysing the story of two athletes that I just happen to know pretty well.

sorry TTFrenzy, but what you wrote up there came off as rude and full of prejudice.

izra said:

sorry TTFrenzy, but what you wrote up there came off as rude and full of prejudice.

Click to expand...

If you are talking about the antetokounmpo story then its not about prejudice or rude at all these are simple facts. If you are referring to my reply to NL, I was "accused" of something I didnt even do and out of any logical proportion.

Its not my fault and I wont apologize if most people are stupid in greece and make racist jokes about blacks selling stuff in the street. What I wanted to "show" with that expression, was that the guy who they know worship once they "spitted" on his face and would continued to do so if he wasnt a great basketball player. If none of you grasped the point, now its definitely clear

What I described are facts and unfortunately the most documentaries about giannis are in greek so I cannot prove them...

It is a fact that giannis was playing only for fun in his spare time and that some "crazy" coaches (greeks or not it does not matter to me, what I admired was their belief and dedication to his character and talent not their race) literally chased/stalked him to go to practice (giannis started practicing regularly at a rather "forbidden and old" age to become a pro) .

It is a fact that his parents didnt want him to play more often because they believed it does not worth it , and it is for the well being of the family to keep selling stuff to help the family because they were struggling with their economical situation. Which is totally understandable untill some incognito scouters from the NBA came to see him and future in basketball seemed to appear. NBA Scouters and some fans of his greek team were the only ones who knew about giannis long before the greek basketball association had any idea

My whole point of my post about kreanga and giannis was to show that sports are also a big business first and everything else comes second.
I wasnt talking about the black race or romanians as a whole, just for two athletes who were used as money making machines from the " pimps " of sports that act like governors.

p.s. fun fact : Nigeria & Spain were ready to go and offer giannis passport to take him in their NT, he was literally a person with no papers and no official citizenship from any country even when he knew he was selected for the NBA draft and he couldnt travel to USA because he didnt have a passport. The PM of greece was practically forced by the GBA and the public opinion to act fast and bend a stupid "law" make an exception and give giannis and his brothers citizenship

fun fact 2 : There are many "rumors" that the Greek TT association made a better economical offer to kreanga than Germany did , which of course kreanga never validated but never denied also, just avoided such type of questions with diplomatic answers.

So...after all this big explanation and thought process, please explain to me what does sports being a big business has anything to do with me being "cultural insensitive" or rude and prejudiced.

you are overanalyzing and overexplaining. your comment with selling cd's and lighters CAME OFF as rude and full of prejudice. i don't care what kind of facts are behind it, and i don't care that you yourself are not full of prejudice, you should have worded it more carefully.

izra said:

you are overanalyzing and overexplaining. your comment with selling cd's and lighters CAME OFF as rude and full of prejudice. i don't care what kind of facts are behind it, you should have worded it more carefully.

Click to expand...

No. I shouldnt. and I explained thoroughly who is prejudiced in my country but maybe you missed or you dont care so...If carl thinks it was out of hand then he can always delete it.

p.s. if NL does not understand the intention behind the phrase and focuses on the way of expressing it , then maybe I should overanalyze/overexplain to set the record straight.

TTFrenzy said:

No. I shouldnt. and I explained thoroughly who is prejudiced in my country but maybe you missed or you dont care so...If carl thinks it was out of hand then he can always delete it.

Click to expand...

i wouldn't say it was out of hand, i'm just saying you made a clumsy sentence that came off like something bad that you didn't intend or mean. you should accept that your words conveyed something else than what you wanted to say when others point it out to you.

izra said:

i wouldn't say it was out of hand, i'm just saying you made a clumsy sentence that came off like something bad that you didn't intend or mean. you should accept that your words conveyed something else than what you wanted to say when others point it out to you.

Click to expand...

totally understandable, but I cannot be held responsible or blamed if anyone here gets triggered about a phrase which happens to be sad but true in my country and it was just an indication of how giannis would be treated by greeks if he didnt start playing basketball professionally

Because I am in this kind of mood, I will let Albus Dumbledore have his say:

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

“People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.”

There is a choir wich scream "racists!". Them pretending they do not understand what it is about. I will repeat them again and again that it's not about racism, it's a scam. And the cheaters are the federations. Federations look and pay adult athletes from other countries because their training programs are poor and inefficient. Then they boast of undue results obtained through sport fraud and ask for money for misleading achievements.
Instead of investing in the training of children in their countries regardless of race, they prefer the easy way and the scam.

Wov guys, I came here to read about table tennis and all I see is some weird arguing about some nigerian basketball player in Greece I never heared of .. humm...

UpSideDownCarl said:

Because I am in this kind of mood, I will let Albus Dumbledore have his say:

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

“People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.”

Click to expand...

Perhaps I will adapt the second Dumbledore quote to fit the situation. I think it applies equally well here even though it was used about a slightly different scenario in the 6th book of the Harry Potter series:

==

People find it far easier to apologize when they were not wrong in the first place than when they were actually in the wrong.

==

Often when someone is comfortable with the fact that they meant no harm and were misunderstood, it is easier to just say:

“Oh, sorry. That isn’t what I meant. But sorry that is how you interpreted what I said.”


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy

UpSideDownCarl said:

Perhaps I will adapt the second Dumbledore quote to fit the situation. I think it applies equally well here even though it was used about a slightly different scenario in the 6th book of the Harry Potter series:

==

People find it far easier to apologize when they were not wrong in the first place than when they were actually in the wrong.

==

Often when someone is comfortable with the fact that they meant no harm and were misunderstood, it is easier to just say:

“Oh, sorry. That isn’t what I meant. But sorry that is how you interpreted what I said.”


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy

Click to expand...

You are spot on Carl especially in the second quote. Maybe it seems "easier" from your perspective but it was too difficult for my temper and character to be a gentleman but for sure I'm working on it. thanks for the inspiration

eyepop said:

It's not visiting country. It's their country too, once they have citizenship.

Click to expand...

Thank you so much.
Finally someone that is using his brain in here.
[Emoji106]

titicostel said:

There is a choir wich scream "racists!". Them pretending they do not understand what it is about. I will repeat them again and again that it's not about racism, it's a scam. And the cheaters are the federations. Federations look and pay adult athletes from other countries because their training programs are poor and inefficient. Then they boast of undue results obtained through sport fraud and ask for money for misleading achievements.
Instead of investing in the training of children in their countries regardless of race, they prefer the easy way and the scam.

Click to expand...

Hahaha, your agenda is too obvious.
That's a sore excuse trying to defend your racist view and shows you don't know a lot how things work.
I'll explain why:
Do you seriously think the DTTB sends coaches to foreign countries for scouting new talents for their national teams? If so, you must have been smoking the wrong stuff, dude.
From a German view it's safe to say that you have a very strong imagination, lad.

I don't know how it is in Aarrrrland, (and i doubt you're coming from there)
but german coaches do a whole f*cking lot to “lure“ young females in to the tabletennis clubs and halls, but tabletennis doesn't seem to be very appealing to young girls, so it's quite hard to make them stick to tabletennis.
To be honest, the ones that do stick to it are quite rare and most of the times it's because their parents also play.
So that's one of the reasons why gals like Wan Yuan, Petrissa Solja or Anastasia Bondareva are playing so good that they also play internationally for Germany.
Besides: THEY ARE GERMAN CITIZENS!!!

Children of former pro players. It hasn't always been that way, but that's how things went, and since we're (luckily) not living in Titicostel's dream world, we rather take things how they are and go from then on.
The point is how can one expect competing seriously with the top pros if they can't even get past these former CNT team C or team D members...

And as others have written before:
Thanks a lot for making your hypocrisy so obvious. Your double standards are disgusting.
You seem to be biased towards east european players or Anti-biased against chinese.
How come nobody says anything about Olga Nemes, Georg Böhm, or nowadays Dimitri Ovtcharov or Petrissa Solja? He was born in Kiew and her parents also ain't born Germans, so what the eff is your racism all about?

Sadly tt-rogue should be knowing all this, and still stubbornly makes his small minded claims. Maybe he's got some kind of inner resistance towards learning (from the past)...

Thanks for making this so easy.
You really are too funny, almost like our next friend here.

Michal_Z said:

Wov guys, I came here to read about table tennis and all I see is some weird arguing about some nigerian basketball player in Greece I never heared of .. humm...

Click to expand...

You are a funny joker. Haven't you been derailing this thread about the european team championship as well with your small minded nationalism?

But alright, let's set the record straight then, even though i probably won't be making a lot of friends with this, but so shall it be then.

Instead of lamenting and whining maybe you should get some knowledge in your brain instead and learn why Thomas Keinath left the german National team and got the slovakian nationality.

Luckily there are people in your country that know the value of having someone like Thomas Keinath in your National team like Juraj Dobra for instance.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10213182704783160&id=1261591135&fs=4

BTW: let me debunk another one of your racist lies.
Since Thomas is in a relationship with Iveta Klacanska former Slovakian player and also has a child together with her he can understand slovakian more than you think, even though he doesn't speak it a lot.

So no need for your prejudice and your Nationalism here.

In fact Nationalism is one of the biggest mistakes if not deseases from the outgoing 19th and 20est century.
It has caused so many wars, so many deaths, so much sorrow, but you still refuse to learn and evolve of the mistakes of the past.

Someone intelligent once said:
Being proud of one's Nationality is one of the stupidest things to do. It's for those who haven't accomplished much in their lives, so they need at least something to be proud of, but just ask yourself what have you done personally for achieving your Nationality??

Right, just like me and everybody else, you have done nothing for it.

It's nothing but a big coincidence.
When i was born i didn't have any influence on my nationality, and so do you.

If your parents were Samoan then you would be samoan too.
If your parents were Inuit you were Inuit too, so how the heck you have the nerve to be proud of something you have done nothing for except coincidencally being born there?
Now that is really small minded.

IMHO your point of view is completely outdated and shows exactly what's going wrong within the european union.

You can not just choose one side of a medal. Any medal. if you want to have it you have to take both sides!!

You cannot only receive and not give.
That's morally quite low.

And don't take this personal, but i think the EU membership came a little too early for some countries that haven't been growing up multiculturally and sharing similar values.

I'm not blaming you or your people for that, and if you look at your history this nationalism is even understandable to a degree.

Not saying it's good or something to be tolerated but somehow understandable.

First being occupied by Nazi Germany then locked behind the iron curtain together with czech republic as czechoslovakia or CSFR you still seem to try to find your national identity.
Probably you people are tired of others telling them what to think or what to do, that's why i think the EU membership came a couple of decades too early IMO.
You can also see the same phenomenon happening in other countries that were locked behind the iron curtain too and then became members of the EU. We have the same kind of problems with many people from certain parts of our country that were locked up behind the iron curtain as well.

I actually didn't want to get all political, but i think this is strongly related to your posts...

But really:
to fully understand a story,
you gotta feel the pain as well as the glory.

Shitstorm in 4,3,2,1....
[Emoji6]