TTC Neu-Ulm is a table tennis club in Germany that opened in 2019. Two years after, this club defeated the top clubs in Europe to win the German Cup 2023. This team, in 2023, is considered the best table tennis team in Europe.
About the Club
∎ Page Contents ∎
In March 2019, a new club called TTC Ebner Ulm tried to get a Bundesliga license.
The request for a license caused a lot of trouble. The most important argument in favor was that no second division team had said they wanted to move up, so the TTBL could not have 12 teams any other way. Last year, the bottom team in the second league, TTC Jülich, had to be moved up so that there were at least 11 teams.
Homepage: https://www.ttcnu.de/
Founder and sponsor
Florian Ebner, as of April 2019, Florian Ebner is the only managing partner of the family business, Verlagsgruppe Ebner Ulm GmbH & Co. kg. He had been President of SSV Ulm 1846 before.
The team line up
The club’s name was changed to TTC Neu-Ulm in the end. Early in June, an unusually large eight-person team was put together, but the Chinese Hao Shuai and Cui Qinglei were not used.
| First team line-up | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019/20 |  ApolóniaTiago |  Tsuboi Gustavo |  |  Stumper Kay |  An Jae-hyun |  Brodd Viktor |
| 2020/21 | ApolóniaTiago |  Sidorenko Wladimir | Lebesson Emmanuel | Stumper Kay |  Hao Shuai | |
| 2021/22 | ApolóniaTiago | Sidorenko Wladimir |  Sgouropoulos Ioannis | | Kazman Lew | |
| 2022/23 | Ovtcharov Dimitrij | Sidorenko Wladimir | Möregårdh Truls | Grebnew Maksim | Kazman Lew |  Lin Yun-ju |
Chen Zhibin was the coach. The Ratiopharm Arena and the smaller Edwin-Scharff-Haus in Neu-Ulm are used for home games. After finishing in eighth place with nine wins out of 21 games, Tsuboi, Salifou, and Brodd left the club. Vladimir Sidorenko and Emmanuel Lebesson, who won the European Championship in 2016, took their places.
In 2021, Neu-Ulm tied for fifth place with Grünwettersbach, which was in fourth place. This meant that Neu-Ulm just missed out on a play-off because the conditions were so bad. This season, Hao Shuai was used instead of An Jae-hyun.
For the 2021/22 season, Ioannis Sgouropoulos and Lev Kazman joined the club instead of Hao and Lebesson. With the wild card, the team also played in the Champions League and made it all the way to the quarterfinals. Apolónia, Sgouropoulos, and Stumper left the club in 2022, and Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Lin Yun-ju, Truls Moregrdh, and Maxim Grebnev took their places.
Comparable cases
This Ebner situation is similar to the 2009 league takeover of TG Hanau by TTV Gonnern. But TG Hanau was not a “fake” club; it had already been playing table tennis before it was made. In other sports, there have been similar situations.
For example, in 2008, the basketball team of FC Bayern Munich bought the license of the Düsseldorf Magic and went straight from the 4th league to the big leagues. Because TSV Unterh was turned down, the German-Austrian volleyball team Hypo Tirol Alpenvolleys Haching was able to play in the Bundesliga in 2017.
Similar articles
©PINGSUNDAY. Unauthorized use, translation or duplication of this material is strictly prohibited. Link and excerpt may be used, provided that clear credit is given to PingSunday with the specific link to the original content.
Sign up and join +65k readers. Get free coaching ebooks and coaching advice every week
