2019's winner!!

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Thank you Zeio for the time taken to translate, but for me that conclusion is a mighty pile of bullswool.
And highly condescending, too. Not sure it even deserves debunking.

It is also overly simplistic to count the number of players in the top 1000 sent from about 20 different European countries and compare it to that of China only. As it works, we know only a selected few are sent abroad from China, and we shouldn't assume the ITTF top 1000 actually reflects who the best 1000 players in the world are. At best, it is a rough estimate of who the best 1000 players are, out of those who (have the means to) consistently participate in events outside of their own national leagues. Two very different things.

Anyhow, there have been a thousand threads on this and this is not the topic at hand. I think FZD is having a little rough patch (by his crazy standards) which will sting and make him think things over quite a bit, and come back with stronger in-game strategy and even more maturity. Harimoto to win more opens but not no1 by the end of the year, is my guess.
 
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There are so many people playing table tennis in Europe, and the level is not weak. Why is there no overall advantage in the international arena?

I think this is also because there isn't as much money in tabletennis as there is in other sports like football for instance, because you need a strong financially potent funding and good infrastructure.

IMHO this is also partly a reason why many east European countries aren't as dominant as before, since their governmental funding has become less.
They used to be very dominant in previous decades like 60's 70's and 80's. There were so many great names to remember.
Since then it became harder to make a living (especially after their career) from playing TT and harder to have an outcome with the income, and less people got/get attracted to tabletennis while the ones that do play move to countries where they get paid enough to make a living.
 
IMHO this is also partly a reason why many east European countries aren't as dominant as before, since their governmental funding has become less.
They used to be very dominant in previous decades like 60's 70's and 80's. There were so many great names to remember.
Since then it became harder to make a living (especially after their career) from playing TT and harder to have an outcome with the income, and less people got/get attracted to tabletennis while the ones that do play move to countries where they get paid enough to make a living.

Its true on the surface, but not exactly.
60's to 80's really were the best for the sport years in Eats Europe. The socialist countries spent a lot of money for sport and sport infrastructure. But while sport was generally affordable for everyone, specialized training was not and was limited for the most prospective only. For example - When I was 7 I started training sweeming, but a year after I was pushed to quit because I didn't show the required competitive developement, though I'm a good sweemer and diver, so I had to sweem on the see only, no sweeming pools for me. When I was 10 I sterted with gymnastics and I was good, my trainor was a Europian champion, but a year after I had to drop outq as I was not good enough for a compatitorq so no gym access for me, only the scool gym available. Then I decided to switch to TT and visited a trayner, but she refised me right on the first training. I have shared here the story how we, the quarter boy squad, managed to collect money to buy a table and play TT for some years in the yard. So yes - socialist years were good fo the sport, but on the surface. Now we still have most of the older facilities, many new are build, and in general and the infrastructure is available for everyone, not for the selected only. Its more expensive, but absolutely affordable, and in addition the regional authorities are financing from time to time sport activities for the poorest, our club is helping this participating in such projects. About the migrating players - yes, its true, but most of them migrate to West Europe, which is still Europe, and we are a European Union, many of this forum members use the EU flag rather than the national, in many aspects EU is more and more like a federation, everyone can go to live and work where he feels good and where accepted.

Why I compare figures of Europe and China, while Europe is a continent and not a single country?
Yes, there are 44 countries in Europe and 28 of them are in the EU.
China is a single country on the surface, but it consists of at least 56 different ethnic groups and its population is twice the european.
And I gave few other figures, just for thinking - Bulgaria plus Luxembourg with population of 7.5 million together and 14 players in ITTF top 1000. Maybe there are much better players out there, but these 1000 are competing for the mirror of the TT sport, and behind this mirror noone can tell where exactly the better than these 1000 players are.
At the end - recognize a real Chinese dominance, I need much more chinese players in top 100 and top 1000. For now it seems to me that the only thing China cares about is to produce a champion, and for me its not exactly a dominance in the sport.
 
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Ok, its a good article.

But here you put other questions - about who is lazy and why.
Can we answer it looking again on the figures?
And is it really about lazyness, or what?
Frankly speaking I'm not all with the ideas of the above article.

Why the greatest TT army in the world have less players than Europe in top 100 and 10 times less than Europe in top 1000?
There are so many vids how hard the chinese children are training and how young they begin, and just the opposite about the lazy europeans. So why Europe has an absolute dominance in top 1000 and top 100? And why China has dominance in top 10 only? There are a lot of pathetic speaking about "whats good for the sport" .
But whats good for the sport really?
To produce a handfull of winners?
Ok, I always solute the winners, never mind the nationality.
But for me "Dominance" is not that only. For me Dominance is the bigger army of winners - and Europe has a platoon of 388 in the army of the best 1000, China has a platoon of 48. Dominance?

Don't get me wrong, I just want to take a look on the greater picture, not focusing on the top-dot only.
At least we are a part of a greater TT comunity, and not just VIP TT Show spectators.
The laziness aspect is TTFrenzy's interpretation. I only wrote "LGL has commented European players don't push themselves enough. Gatien held a similar view for his young countrymen, that they don't train hard enough."

Gatien made that comment when he went to Shanghai for a promotional event of the Cornilleau Target series in May, 2012.

http://www.chinanews.com/ty/2012/05-16/3892282.shtml
  感叹欧洲乒乓体制需转变

  盖亭纵横江湖的上世纪90年代,来自欧洲的瓦尔德内尔、大小塞弗、施拉格群雄并起。而今,放眼欧洲,只剩波尔能与中国军团抗衡。

  2004年退役的盖亭哀叹说:“在欧洲乒乓球顶级联赛里,打得最好的仍旧是老将。目前欧洲只有两个国家还致力于培养乒乓球新秀,就是德国和法国。我们的球员有才华,但只有才华可不够。中国有那么多好教练、好球员,球员的训练时间还超长,球员要进入国家队,要一层层打上去,经过残酷的竞争,但是我们欧洲的球员远没有那么刻苦,他们必须转变思维,只有更刻苦、更有创造性才能匹敌中国。”

  中国乒乓球队正在封闭训练为奥运蓄势,盖亭说:“集训两个月能帮助中国队在奥运会时调整到最佳状态,但是欧洲乒乓球的体系和中国不同,运动员都和俱乐部有合同,每周都要为俱乐部打比赛,根本没办法进行系统准备,要想跟上中国队的备战节奏,欧洲国家的乒乓球体制需要改变。”
The European table tennis system needs to change

Gatien belongs to the era of the 90's, alongside Waldner, Saive, and Schlager from Europe. Today, looking across Europe, only Boll can compete with the Chinese army.

Gatien, who retired in 2004, lamented: "In the European table tennis top league, the best players are still the veterans. Currently only 2 countries in Europe are committed to training table tennis rookies, Germany and France. Our players have talent, but talent alone is not enough. There are so many good coaches and good players in China. The training time of the players is so long. For players to enter the national team, they must fight through layers of competition. Our European players have it far easier. They have to change their mindsets, only by working harder and being more creative can they rival China."

The Chinese table tennis team is in closed training for the Olympics. Gatien said: "The two months of training can help the Chinese team adjust to the best state during the Olympics. However, the European table tennis system is different from China. The athletes have contracts with the club. Every week, we have to play for the club. There is no way to prepare systematically. In order to keep up with the pace of preparation for the Chinese team, the table tennis system in European countries needs to change."

Boll has admitted he doesn't train as hard.

http://sports.sina.com.cn/o/2010-04-12/10304934139.shtml
  蔡振华说过,能进入世界排名前50位的欧洲运动员都是天才。对于老蔡的评价,波尔不否认。他说,“我的训练不像中国运动员那样刻苦,身边的教练没像刘国梁那么聪明,这么说来,我算是个天才吧。”
Cai Zhenhua has said before any European players who could make the top 50 are prodigies. Boll agrees with this assessment, saying "I don't train as hard as the Chinese players, and I don't have a coach as smart as LGL. It's safe to say I'm a prodigy, right?"

The issue I want to highlight here. We have no shortage of posts praising how China is so good, wondering why China is so good, and last but not least, putting the blame on China for being too good. Yet, I don't see much discussion on why Europe is so bad now?

Japan actually suffered that problem. After Rio 2016, Yasukazu Murakami, the previous head coach for the JNT, revealed the root cause behind the fall of Japan, other than a poor BH, was that Japanese players cared little about international competitions. They focused only on domestic results. After finishing 13th in the men's team event at the WTTC 2001, Murakami, Yoshihito and Maehara decided they had to intervene, by initiating a junior program focused on winning medals in international competitions.

It's in English. Give it a read.
https://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00381/
“But up to 2000, only two of the winners of that competition went on to take part in singles events at the Olympics. Coaches focused too much on taking the immediate prize of the national tournament, rather than looking ahead to international competition,” says Maehara Masahiro, vice president of the Japan Table Tennis Association. “As international play moved on, Japan was no longer competitive. There were few coaches able to provide instruction on how to prevail against world-level opposition.”

As the national head coach, Maehara took charge of creating a program to cultivate young players in October 2001. “There was a pressing need to hold training camps for elementary school students and develop young players with the technique and mindset to win in international competition.”

-------------
As for the WR, I've already written on that before when the new system kicked in.

http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=81368&PID=1010334&title=jan-2018-ranking#1010334
You assume they CAN enter a tournament. That's the problem. In reality, every association other than the host is pretty much stuck with the hard quota of 6 for singles and 2 pairs for doubles per gender, as everyone is fighting for a spot now, unlike before.

So now the CNT has to make a choice of who to send for the 6 spots. On the one hand, you have to keep your top players at the top of the ranking list, yet you want your young, lower ranked players to gain exposure. Bam, a dilemma!

For Hungarian Open, they have chosen to send those in the 200s and 300s on the Jan WR, probably because there is a vacuum in the 100s. They want to keep them closer to the top as replacements because ZJK, YA, LJK, and ZY could drop out at this rate.

Another catch is the no separation by association in the group stage and main draw. This could be viewed as a mechanism to mitigate the "human wave attack." The more players you send, the more likely they will meet in the early rounds.

OTOH, the WTTC quota has been reduced to only 5 for each association(6 for host). There is really no incentive in keeping a large number of surplus players on the WR that they have no way of fielding.

There are 4 CNT players in the Top 8. So long as they can secure the podium around the QF, they will likely keep it that way in the future.
Basically, the entire CNT's approach is designed around securing medals as a team in the most efficient way. UpSideDownCarl also has a similar take on why the CNT doesn't flood the WR. This is why they find the new WR system totally unsettling.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...orea-Open-2018&p=238160&viewfull=1#post238160
OTOH, this competition-oriented approach doesn't sit well with the CNT. They have to field their B team players to the World Tour WAY more than before, many of which are supposed to play the role of copy players, serving the few cream-of-the-crop players. The "no separation of association" is completely at odds with their central idea of working as a team. Now you have these copy players thinking "perhaps I have a chance to make it big, too." You could sense the team spirit is not as solid anymore.

For 2019, the ITTF has removed the hard cap on World Tour entry per association and there'll be "separation per association" in the 1st round of qualifier. China will be sending an army for the Hungarian Open. Will we start seeing more CNT players in the WR? I can only wish people won't complain when they see that.

https://www.ittf.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2019_WT_Directives_-1.pdf
2.4. Draws
a. Main Draw
...
• Conducted according to the ITTF rules for that purpose, but without any separation per National Association.
...
b. First Stage Draw
...
• For Knock-out players/pairs will be drawn according to the World Ranking with separation per National Association only for the first round.
 
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The most interesting thing to me to watch out for in 2019 will be how CNT responds to Ito and Harimoto threat. Considering the fact , FZD is erratic lately and ML is injured for long, it will be interesting to see how general LGL will pick his players for pre Olympic year. And I have no doubt Harimoto will make more progress and probably end up as WR # 1.
 
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Its true on the surface, but not exactly.
60's to 80's really were the best for the sport years in Eats Europe. The socialist countries spent a lot of money for sport and sport infrastructure. But while sport was generally affordable for everyone, specialized training was not and was limited for the most prospective only. For example - When I was 7 I started training sweeming, but a year after I was pushed to quit because I didn't show the required competitive developement, though I'm a good sweemer and diver, so I had to sweem on the see only, no sweeming pools for me. When I was 10 I sterted with gymnastics and I was good, my trainor was a Europian champion, but a year after I had to drop outq as I was not good enough for a compatitorq so no gym access for me, only the scool gym available. Then I decided to switch to TT and visited a trayner, but she refised me right on the first training. I have shared here the story how we, the quarter boy squad, managed to collect money to buy a table and play TT for some years in the yard. So yes - socialist years were good fo the sport, but on the surface. Now we still have most of the older facilities, many new are build, and in general and the infrastructure is available for everyone, not for the selected only. Its more expensive, but absolutely affordable, and in addition the regional authorities are financing from time to time sport activities for the poorest, our club is helping this participating in such projects. About the migrating players - yes, its true, but most of them migrate to West Europe, which is still Europe, and we are a European Union, many of this forum members use the EU flag rather than the national, in many aspects EU is more and more like a federation, everyone can go to live and work where he feels good and where accepted.

Why I compare figures of Europe and China, while Europe is a continent and not a single country?
Yes, there are 44 countries in Europe and 28 of them are in the EU.
China is a single country on the surface, but it consists of at least 56 different ethnic groups and its population is twice the european.
And I gave few other figures, just for thinking - Bulgaria plus Luxembourg with population of 7.5 million together and 14 players in ITTF top 1000. Maybe there are much better players out there, but these 1000 are competing for the mirror of the TT sport, and behind this mirror noone can tell where exactly the better than these 1000 players are.
At the end - recognize a real Chinese dominance, I need much more chinese players in top 100 and top 1000. For now it seems to me that the only thing China cares about is to produce a champion, and for me its not exactly a dominance in the sport.

Thanks for the detailed insight.
Good to hear from a different perspective as i see things more from the outside as a bystander. So good to hear from first hand experience.

Thanks again
 
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The laziness aspect is TTFrenzy's interpretation. I only wrote "LGL has commented European players don't push themselves enough. Gatien held a similar view for his young countrymen, that they don't train hard enough."

Gatien made that comment when he went to Shanghai for a promotional event of the Cornilleau Target series in May, 2014.

http://www.chinanews.com/ty/2012/05-16/3892282.shtml

The European table tennis system needs to change

Gatien belongs to the era of the 90's, alongside Waldner, Saive, and Schlager from Europe. Today, looking across Europe, only Boll can compete with the Chinese army.

Gatien, who retired in 2004, lamented: "In the European table tennis top league, the best players are still the veterans. Currently only 2 countries in Europe are committed to training table tennis rookies, Germany and France. Our players have talent, but talent alone is not enough. There are so many good coaches and good players in China. The training time of the players is so long. For players to enter the national team, they must fight through layers of competition. Our European players have it far easier. They have to change their mindsets, only by working harder and being more creative can they rival China."

The Chinese table tennis team is in closed training for the Olympics. Gatien said: "The two months of training can help the Chinese team adjust to the best state during the Olympics. However, the European table tennis system is different from China. The athletes have contracts with the club. Every week, we have to play for the club. There is no way to prepare systematically. In order to keep up with the pace of preparation for the Chinese team, the table tennis system in European countries needs to change."

Boll has admitted he doesn't train as hard.

http://sports.sina.com.cn/o/2010-04-12/10304934139.shtml

Cai Zhenhua has said before any European players who could make the top 50 are prodigies. Boll agrees with this assessment, saying "I don't train as hard as the Chinese players, and I don't have a coach as smart as LGL. It's safe to say I'm a prodigy, right?"

The issue I want to highlight here. We have no shortage of posts praising how China is so good, wondering why China is so good, and last but not least, putting the blame on China for being too good. Yet, I don't see much discussion on why Europe is so bad now?

Japan actually suffered that problem. After Rio 2016, Yasukazu Murakami, the previous head coach for the JNT, revealed the root cause behind the fall of Japan, other than a poor BH, was that Japanese players cared little about international competitions. They focused only on domestic results. After finishing 13th in the men's team event at the WTTC 2001, Murakami, Yoshihito and Maehara decided they had to intervene, by initiating a junior program focused on winning medals in international competitions.

It's in English. Give it a read.
https://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00381/


-------------
As for the WR, I've already written on that before when the new system kicked in.

http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=81368&PID=1010334&title=jan-2018-ranking#1010334

Basically, the entire CNT's approach is designed around securing medals as a team in the most efficient way. UpSideDownCarl also has a similar take on why the CNT doesn't flood the WR. This is why they find the new WR system totally unsettling.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...orea-Open-2018&p=238160&viewfull=1#post238160


For 2019, the ITTF has removed the hard cap on World Tour entry per association and there'll be "separation per association" in the 1st round of qualifier. China will be sending an army for the Hungarian Open. Will we start seeing more CNT players in the WR? I can only wish people won't complain when they see that.

https://www.ittf.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2019_WT_Directives_-1.pdf

Man, you don't make it easy to answer! Thanks for taking the time, lots of interesting content. I'll stick with "it's not as easy as "Europeans are lazy"" (they would all be rubbish at football, as an example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup#Knockout_stage), but couldn't go anywhere near as close in detail. Still, other than money, national culture and recognition do play a role (seriously, I hate it whenever I am asked which sports I practice, and I feel I have to justify my answer when I mention table tennis - you could be national champion and a lot of people would barely give you a half-hearted "oh, that's nice", some of them certainly keeping a smile for themselves) and it is fair to say that the motivating factors aren't the same, which you could take as the other edge of the "lack of commitment" sword. In which case, we do kind of agree. And then there is the whole structural debate (which was sort of touched upon in the previous article you linked to, with the EU Butterfly guy), but that is me out of this.

I would add however, that countries such as Luxembourg offer very high life standards, so it is certainly easier to go your own way even on the (lower) international scene than if you came from, say, 98% of other countries in the world.


Hoping we can get back on topic (pleading guilty myself) as there are so many such threads, but I am with you when it comes to your final sentence. It might actually do the ITTF tournaments some good, as we may have a bit less of the "same old" for those who see it that way (i.e. more diversity and new upcoming names - ideally different styles, as in more defenders, penholders etc.) and, who knows, more upsets at the top if that stuff about weaker team spirit proves to be true. In that last instance, I'd personally regret it deeply (they have style! - not to mention how we then may start to realise how much they bring to the game), but it might put to rest the whole hegemony hating crowd, at least for a while.
 
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