The TTC Neu-Ulm will no longer compete in the table tennis Bundesliga. The top club draws this consequence from an escalated dispute with the league. The Bundesliga also loses one of its biggest stars.
The TTC Neu-Ulm is withdrawing from the table tennis Bundesliga after only four years and wants to concentrate solely on the Champions League with stars like Dimitrij Ovtcharov. The club announced this in a press release and in a letter to the league association TTBL. The Neu-Ulmer did not apply for a Bundesliga license for the next season shortly after the deadline and wrote in their message: “The fact that the farewell has to take place right now after the Final Four in the cup, which was won so magnificently, in front of a great home crowd, that is bitter and really hurts everyone involved!" Instead, they ask for the classification as "voluntary relegation".
The background to this withdrawal is a dispute with the TTBL over the two New Ulm stars Truls Moregardh from Sweden and the Taiwanese Lin Yun-ju. Both also played for different clubs abroad in January and were therefore fined and suspended for ten games by the league. However, this ban will not apply until the coming season. Both players had waited for the cup final, but missed the deadline for a change to the second half of the season. The TTC admits the violation, the dispute is the period of the ban.
The cup winner and Champions League semi-finalist Neu-Ulm therefore lodged a protest before an arbitration court, but does not expect a verdict for six to eight weeks. "The two players cannot and do not want to wait two or three months for the arbitral tribunal to decide whether they can continue to play," the cup winner said in a statement. However, the ban does not apply in the Champions League. As in the past two years, the Ulm club are relying on a wild card from the European association ETTU.
Olympic bronze medalist Dimitrij Ovtcharov, top player at TTC Neu-Ulm, had previously threatened to leave the Bundesliga. "Unfortunately, it's more than questionable whether I can continue in the TTBL as my teammates Truls and Yun-Ju have been suspended from the league and fined financially ", Ovtcharov wrote on Instagram on Monday evening.
A few hours earlier, the 34-year-old had also sharply attacked the league in a post, but Ovtcharov later deleted this criticism. The exceptional player had criticized the dual role of Andreas Preuss, the manager works for Neu-Ulm's league rivals Borussia Düsseldorf and also works as the head of the TTBL supervisory board. Neu-Ulm and Düsseldorf are fierce competitors in the TTBL and at international level: on Sunday, the Rhinelanders around record European champion Timo Boll made it into the Champions League final against Neu-Ulm.
