Are the rest of the World catching China?

[Tony's Table Tennis]

WTT Contender Durban - BREAKING NEWS
6 Chinese Mens entered, 4 are knocked out in the Round of 32!!


Stiga player, Tom Javis (ENG) causing a huge upset over Chinese Xue Fei 3-0.
Lin Shidong survived and will be facing Tom in the R16
Franziska (GER) beating Chen Yuanyu 3-0 as expected
Jules Rolland (FRA - WR142) causing a huge upset over Liang Linning (WR48) in a very close 3-1 win.
King of Africa, Aruna beating Sun Wen 3-1
Xu Yingbin also survived and will facing Simon GAUZY (FRA) next

These second string first teamers as I call it, has been loosing a lot of WTT matches over the past 12 months.
I have been asking Asian coaches over the past 12 months on why this is happening.....

This is my conclusion:

1) Every country has Chinese coaches, trainers, sparring partners.
It is clear that the level of the rest of the world has increase over the years and in numbers too.

2) The likes of Ma Long and Zhang Jike as we witness over the past 1 to 2 decades, are GOATs that appear once every few decades. So the expectations on the "next in line" is put very high.

3) We all know the game has changes so much, with majority of the changes made to reduce the advantage of a stronger player over a weaker player.

4) The pressure is there for China to always win, win, win. Loosing is not an option. But without Ma Long for too long (on the decline already) and Xu Xin retiring, Fan Zhendong on the decline too....and the next gen not strong enough to maintain a 80~90% win rate....(Ma Long has a 93% win rate against non-Chinese)

Maybe that is why, Coach Qin has aged so much in recent years (read here for more info)

PS. Sharing here as per the request of Dan. He chose the title too. Thanks Dan!

 

[dingyibvs]

WTT Contender Durban - BREAKING NEWS
6 Chinese Mens entered, 4 are knocked out in the Round of 32!!


Stiga player, Tom Javis (ENG) causing a huge upset over Chinese Xue Fei 3-0.
Lin Shidong survived and will be facing Tom in the R16
Franziska (GER) beating Chen Yuanyu 3-0 as expected
Jules Rolland (FRA - WR142) causing a huge upset over Liang Linning (WR48) in a very close 3-1 win.
King of Africa, Aruna beating Sun Wen 3-1
Xu Yingbin also survived and will facing Simon GAUZY (FRA) next

These second string first teamers as I call it, has been loosing a lot of WTT matches over the past 12 months.
I have been asking Asian coaches over the past 12 months on why this is happening.....

This is my conclusion:

1) Every country has Chinese coaches, trainers, sparring partners.
It is clear that the level of the rest of the world has increase over the years and in numbers too.

2) The likes of Ma Long and Zhang Jike as we witness over the past 1 to 2 decades, are GOATs that appear once every few decades. So the expectations on the "next in line" is put very high.

3) We all know the game has changes so much, with majority of the changes made to reduce the advantage of a stronger player over a weaker player.

4) The pressure is there for China to always win, win, win. Loosing is not an option. But without Ma Long for too long (on the decline already) and Xu Xin retiring, Fan Zhendong on the decline too....and the next gen not strong enough to maintain a 80~90% win rate....(Ma Long has a 93% win rate against non-Chinese)

Maybe that is why, Coach Qin has aged so much in recent years (read here for more info)

PS. Sharing here as per the request of Dan. He chose the title too. Thanks Dan!

I think the rest of the world have definitely caught up a bit, but I'm not sure these results are that surprising. The older ones who rarely play in international matches often didn't fare well when they did. You know, guys like Zhang Chao, Yin Hang, Shang Kun, etc. Xu Yingbin and Lin Shidong are clearly a cut above the rest based on recent performances, they'll probably be the ones that people talk about when they mention the CNT. Lin is still a bit young, not sure he's quite ready for prime time yet, but Xu looks on the verge of breaking out and joining FZD and WCQ on the 1st team.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

A long time ago, there is this nice rivalry and also nice conversation opener that is Euro style versus Chinese style.

Nowadays, with more and more players around the world training like the Chinese and having Chinese Coaches and whatsnot, we are back to talking about weather and that sort of thing for small talk.

 

[Dominikk85]

WTT Contender Durban - BREAKING NEWS
6 Chinese Mens entered, 4 are knocked out in the Round of 32!!


Stiga player, Tom Javis (ENG) causing a huge upset over Chinese Xue Fei 3-0.
Lin Shidong survived and will be facing Tom in the R16
Franziska (GER) beating Chen Yuanyu 3-0 as expected
Jules Rolland (FRA - WR142) causing a huge upset over Liang Linning (WR48) in a very close 3-1 win.
King of Africa, Aruna beating Sun Wen 3-1
Xu Yingbin also survived and will facing Simon GAUZY (FRA) next

These second string first teamers as I call it, has been loosing a lot of WTT matches over the past 12 months.
I have been asking Asian coaches over the past 12 months on why this is happening.....

This is my conclusion:

1) Every country has Chinese coaches, trainers, sparring partners.
It is clear that the level of the rest of the world has increase over the years and in numbers too.

2) The likes of Ma Long and Zhang Jike as we witness over the past 1 to 2 decades, are GOATs that appear once every few decades. So the expectations on the "next in line" is put very high.

3) We all know the game has changes so much, with majority of the changes made to reduce the advantage of a stronger player over a weaker player.

4) The pressure is there for China to always win, win, win. Loosing is not an option. But without Ma Long for too long (on the decline already) and Xu Xin retiring, Fan Zhendong on the decline too....and the next gen not strong enough to maintain a 80~90% win rate....(Ma Long has a 93% win rate against non-Chinese)

Maybe that is why, Coach Qin has aged so much in recent years (read here for more info)

PS. Sharing here as per the request of Dan. He chose the title too. Thanks Dan!

I think the World is catching up somewhat but except for ma long most of those Chinese players are more third string than second string players.

The guy who lost (except for ma long are ranked in the 9-12 range in china). Of course the 10th best player in China is still excellent but the true second string is probably lin gaoyuan, xiang peng and zhou qihao.

But still it is interesting that some of those second and third string players often play great games in the Chinese league beating or close playing and narrowly losing decider set against the absolute top Chinese players and then sometimes they come to Europe and lose to some second string European with a losing record in the Bundesliga.

I wonder if part of the reason is that especially the younger Euro guys are more used to international competition from a young age (there are even like under 12 European championships now) while chinese players focus more on training and local competition.

I think that has advantages and disadvantages. The chinese players have more time for training and thus might develope a better game long term but euro players develope very good mental strength, nerves and match ability due to all the international competition they play from a young age.

It's almost like in Europe they find out whether you can compete first and then teach you table tennis (you get into the academies by winning a lot of matches as a young kid) and in china it is more they make you a good table tennis player first and then find out whether you can compete.

The result of this is china has a lot of excellent table tennis players but many of them are mentally not equipped to compete at the top and then they disappear after some time again.

That worked for China in the last decades because they had so many of those guys so some with good nerves would survive but in Europe they don't have the resources to spend a lot of time coaching someone who can't compete so they find out at a young age and weed out the guys who can't compete by putting them in a lot of competition (they are not totally weeded out and still get trained in a club but not making a high performance academy).

I wonder if there will be a shift in china to enter international competition younger (more like under 15 already) instead of waiting for under 19 or so.

 

[longle]

Coach Qin's retirement will be a huge loss for CNT, so we won't see those legendary coaches no more (Coach Wu, Coach Qin) 😢

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Very fair point everyone

I kindof just position them as Top 8, with Top 3/Top5/Top 8 in there. Then the rest is just second strings.
I think one thing I did not cover was the age versus level at that age.

Xu is 21
Lin is 17

When the likes of XX/ML/FZD where at 20 or 21, they were already top 5/top 8 and clearly can be seen as the future top 3.
Xu is not there yet and he could just be like the previous 2 generations (ie Yan An, Fang Bo and then LGY, ZQH, LJK for example). Those guys are good, but not a 80% winning good, or 90% winning good. They would loose at times to non Chinese and the older they got, it didn't get any better.
The same guys "carrying" CNT are still there today (other than the retired XX recently)

WCQ has kindof broken into the top 3/top 5. If Xu does not do it by 23 or 24...he will just become like the others.
Then you have 26 year old Sun Wen that with "over age" and still kind of not breaking in any where and not getting push out from 2nd team (junior team) promoting in. There is no longer those 16 year olds in the 1st team that is jumping straight into top 5 (and skipping at least 10 "seniors" ahead of him)

We will see how Xu performs later against Simon Gauzy.
Lin is up against Tom Javis who took out Xue Fei straights. If Lin makes it though, he has Hugo in the QF.


In 2022 we had witness some really bad losses and since 2019... these bad losses started to appear. Maybe the crack is getting bigger and bigger.
So much coaches left in 2020~2021 and with the new reshuffle on 29 Dec, will we see a gray Wang Hao by this Christmas?

Dominikk does raise a valid point. I do think U13 is required. There are so much more tournaments nowadays, and testing the youth in China and internationally is indeed two different mental walls to break.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Coach Qin's retirement will be a huge loss for CNT, so we won't see those legendary coaches no more (Coach Wu, Coach Qin) 😢

Rumors has it, the problem is pretty big.
Other than very weak influx of players, the coaching group is also a huge concern from many inside the circle.
Problem started with kids not wanting to play table tennis any more (this was over a decade ago). Beijing team has been struggling to even full its team up for example.
and over the years we have witness weak 20 odd years old 1st teamers still not replaced by 2nd team players.
When Miwa went to China at age 11, none of the 2nd team players could beat her, we talking 15 years olds can't beat an 11 year old, so this is a problem dating 10 years back at least.

Qin might just be very clever and jump ship before he becomes the 2nd Shi?
However Shi was just womens team, while, if Qin stayed, he would be both Mens and Womens head coach.

 

[SFF_lib]

WTT Contender Durban - BREAKING NEWS
6 Chinese Mens entered, 4 are knocked out in the Round of 32!!


Stiga player, Tom Javis (ENG) causing a huge upset over Chinese Xue Fei 3-0.
Lin Shidong survived and will be facing Tom in the R16
Franziska (GER) beating Chen Yuanyu 3-0 as expected
Jules Rolland (FRA - WR142) causing a huge upset over Liang Linning (WR48) in a very close 3-1 win.
King of Africa, Aruna beating Sun Wen 3-1
Xu Yingbin also survived and will facing Simon GAUZY (FRA) next

These second string first teamers as I call it, has been loosing a lot of WTT matches over the past 12 months.
I have been asking Asian coaches over the past 12 months on why this is happening.....

Way too much reliance on the top 5 for the last decade - ML, XX, FZD, LJK and LGY. The rest of Men's team was given very little chance on the international stage. I watched a video analysis on Bilibili once, they calculated the number of matches. They concluded youngsters in Europe such as the Lebrun played 10x more matches than the second-tier CNT (men's). That led to inconsistency in performance, weak mentality, inability to adapt to different styles etc.

 

[piligrim]

King of Africa, Aruna beating Sun Wen 3-1

King of Africa, Aruna lost to WR145 ZHMUDENKO

 

[Gozo Aruna]

I blame the lack of International exposure for the poor performance of CNT's second liner.

My take: Send them out more to play internationally and they will buck up. After all, they have the inputs / sharing of their big brothers like ML, XX, FZD to help them progress.

 

[Dominikk85]

I blame the lack of International exposure for the poor performance of CNT's second liner.

My take: Send them out more to play internationally and they will buck up. After all, they have the inputs / sharing of their big brothers like ML, XX, FZD to help them progress.

I think in the past not playing so much internationally has been part of the plan, assuming there is strong enough competition and also not giving other countries a chance to get used to their play.

It hasn't been like that for quite some time but in the past China had been guys coming up like age 18-19 and beating the world immediately.

Wang hao and liu guoliang for example had immediate international success before they turned 20 and in their case I think not getting played internationally was an advantage for them.

In the contrary I feel for the Japanese girls it is a disadvantage to some degree to play so much internationally at a young age because the Chinese had so much time to figure them out.

But of course playing internationally also has some advantages, so it is not such an easy decision.

 

[OldUser]

FZD on the decline *cough cough* I guess WCQ does not agree AT ALL given their last encounter. FZD has beaten Ma Long in the Singapore Smash, has only lost to 2 non-chinese player this year: Harimoto in the World Team event, and Dima in the World Cup. I mean, would you have said the same when Liam Pitchford won vs Ma Long in the '18 Bulgarian Open ? yes, he was probably injured... as FZD was in the WTTTC being overweight and wearing knee straps. In the chinese Super League he was not wearing straps, was way fitter, and WCQ couldn't do anything.

Is Europe catching up (cos' we're mostly talking about European players here) ? no, the chinese players mentioned here are B, even C team guys, when Franziska won vs Ma Long, yeah it was a huge upset, same for Alexis Lebrun vs LJK after that controversial win vs LGY. Because those guys are definitely A Team players.

Lin Shidong and Chen Yanyu, the most promising young guys, can't compare to them already, they've been beaten in the last world youth team event by Felix Lebrun for instance, the best Felix Lebrun has done vs the A team is only taking 1 set to Ma Long... and later in the same tournament Franziska ousted Ma Long.

Is Ma Long declining ? yeah for sure, but hey.. he's aging also, and we all know it's easier for an old Timo Boll to keep track in Europe at 41 than for a 33 years old XX or 34 years old ML to do in China. By the way, in the WTTTC Ma Long was the captain, the leading force, the mind behind WCQ's victory in the decider match in the semi vs Japan. Ma Long will be for sure the next head coach, and this is why Europe will not catch China before a decade at least, this man is the Zidane of TT, he turns everything he touches in this sport into gold.

Are there chinese coaches in national teams in Europe ? not yet, chinese coach elsewhere in leagues ? of course, but that's the case since 40 to 50 years at least, when waldner, Persson and Gatien were leading Europe in the 90's, there were NO chinese coaches or assistant in Sweden's or France's staff.

The only one I know in Europe in a big nation is Li Samson in the women's french team, but the only one catching up with chinese girls is also a chinese native, Jianan Yuan, like Xia Lian Ni in Luxemburg since decades or Xiaona Shan or Han Ying in the women's german team. And what do we see ? B or C team girls, and the youth girls, are trusting 90% of the titles, only the Japan youth girls can keep up.

Europeans play and train like... europeans, they focus now on making their youth coaching each other at a very young age to get the tactics and strategies engrained. When Jianan Yuan has beaten Wang Manyu, it was Alexis Lebrun coaching her, not Li samson. You can tell that now A. Lebrun is better at coaching than many national team coaches... and he's only 19 (I mean... now he can tell everyone that he's beaten Ma Lin at coaching hahaha).

Now, when you see the results at the last World Youth Camps, China is still leading by far in the medal count, Japan is second, and France is the third world nation, the Europe's leading force for youth so... with only 1 gold medal, Flavien Coton in the U15 boy single tournament but let's be honest: no chinese boy were competing in that draw ! France was way too much alone for Europe in those events, Romania or Poland were too much outclassed sadly... and the Sweden + Germany case is getting worse. When you don't build enough youngsters, it's getting worse a decade after.

We all know some chinese boys get way better after they reach 20 or 21, the chinese Super League is a short timed league, the rest of the time the guys train a lot before getting into world competitions, they then face A team experienced europeans playing at the world level since at least a decade.

It's not the same for Koreans, Japanese or European kids who get to play at the highest level way earlier, Japan paved the way for Europe with the Harimoto siblings and Mima Ito for example, now Moregard and the Lebrun Bros. are experienced players aready... not more than 20 years old, playing in senior events. But the girls are still struggling, as far as I know Jia Nan Yuan is the second european that has been able to beat a chinese A team woman, I mean here Wang Manyu or Shasha or Cheng Meng, cos' Bernie has previously beaten Cheng Meng in Macao.

It's way too little, still.

 

[OldUser]

King of Africa, Aruna lost to WR145 ZHMUDENKO

Zhmudenko has had the time of his life, he's been litterally in the zone in that tournament, but... Hugo was way stronger again.

 

[RicardoGatsopare]

I believe that the rest of the world has started to use harder rubbers with more spin plays a big part of it. I remember an interview Jörgen Person did after he played in the Chinese super league in 2008. He there stated that after trying the Chinese players' rackets he realized their rackets were both faster and had more spin.

I'm very happy about the gap closing Thank you Timo Boll for being persistent in developing Dignincs 09c!

I started using Hurricane in 2004 which I could buy from my Chinese coach. Looking back it's interesting it took so long for Europeans to see the benefit of harder rubbers.

 

[Attitude]

Imo there is no real catching up. The most upsets are against declining members of the CNT and B-Level members. Everyone else has no issue of destroying everyone else in the top 20.

But in the bigger scheme of things, this might change. Right now the CNT lack the upcomings of another FZD. Lin Shidong for example is way weaker and less consistent as FZD/Ma Long was at the same age. Same goes for any other players from their younger teams. They need to step up big time these upcoming tournaments, otherwise we will see some catching up, because China wont keep up the same level as they had with Ma Long and FZD. If they are lucky WCQ will be the stable point to change that but besides him i dont see the same quality.