Miscellaneous

In a social media poll, fans of the German Table Tennis League (TTBL) were able to vote for their ‘TTBL Player of the Month for February’ after the WTT Star Contender in Chennai (India) and three other TTBL rounds. A total of five candidates were up for election (in alphabetical order): Benedikt Duda (TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt), Fan Zhendong (1. FC Saarbrücken-TT), Kirill Gerassimenko (Werder Bremen), Anton Källberg (Borussia Düsseldorf) and Shunsuke Togami (TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen). Fan received the most votes.

Fan Zhendong has clearly taken on the role of a literal front-runner in the TTBL community. With his clean slate in the league matches for 1. FC Saarbrücken last month, but without a ‘big point’ and even despite his defeats in his team's second Champions League quarter-final against GV Hennebont, the Olympic champion won the ‘Player of the Month for February’ vote by a large margin.

The two-time world champion thus set a new record in the current TTBL season: Fan is the first player to win a fan vote for ‘Player of the Month’ for the second time, after the Chinese player was already named ‘Player of the Month’ last December.

Fans of February's rivals need not despair, however: the 29-year-old's huge lead in the voting suggests that his nomination alone is likely to activate a superstar bonus among his supporters and in the ‘Chinese community’.

In purely sporting terms, the exceptional player from the Middle Kingdom was not among the top favourites for the award among the candidates. Victories in Saarbrücken's Bundesliga matches against TTC Zugbrücke Grenzau and Borussia Düsseldorf in duels with Patrick Baum and Maciej Kubik (both Grenzau) and Kanak Jha (Düsseldorf) fall – measured, of course, by Fan's unusual abilities – largely undisputedly into the category of ‘must-win matches’. On the other hand, his defeats in the Champions League against Wen Ruibo (GV Hennebont) and in the Bundesliga doubles with Cedric Meißner in Düsseldorf somewhat clouded the FCS top player's monthly record.

However, table tennis enthusiasts are currently less interested in Fan's results than in the pending decision about his future with the Blue and Blacks. Saarbrücken is not putting any pressure on Fan after submitting an offer: ‘You don't set deadlines for a player and person like Fan Zhendong,’ said Saarbrücken's team manager Barrois recently, emphasising his patience with the situation: ‘Even if he only tells us he wants to stay on the last day before the transfer deadline, then he'll stay.’

Florian Manzke
Featured image above: Fan Zhendong from 1. FC Saarbrücken-TT (Image: Hermann Zacher)