It has given a clear impression that ETTU doesn’t have any backbone or respect towards the tradition of the tournaments it organizes. As soon as financial benefits are on the horizon, there are no issues to change the rules of the game and let the money talk. If we look before Moura’s presidency, ETTU had the potential to be in a very good place financially.
A few years before the events in Ukraine started was a very lucrative and promising time for ETTU, since the aide to the president of Russian President Vladimir Putin – Igor Levitin was elected as an ETTU President in September 2020. Soon after, ETTU got a sponsorship from the largest Russian company – Gazprom. After the conflict in Ukraine began, Levitin resigned from his position, but the ETTU board remained pretty much the same.
Since getting sponsorship from Gazprom or any other major Russian companies was no longer a possibility, ETTU had to find ways, how to make some extra money. And why look too far, if you can simply copy-cat the WTT Youth Contenders and present the Europe Youth Series? However, this Euro-centric tournament looks simply like another cash-grab scheme in table tennis, similar to WTT Feeder tournaments.
