Question: non-German players on German team

[ray]

Hi everyone.

This was recently brought up on About.com's forum. The original poster mentioned that this was a *rumour* and asked if it was true. Does anyone know?

German table tennis federation is not very happy to see German team consisting of mainly Chinese players. Jing Zorner-Tian, who was for some time probably the best female player with European citizenship, never was allowed to play for German team, only played in singles. And I heard that another "new German", Qianhong He-Gotsch, actually sued German federation in order to get the place on German team.

Ray

[Thorsten]

From what I hear Germany didn't want to start with only Chinese-born players.

1. Qianhong Gotsch
2. Jing Tian-Zörner
3. Jie Schöpp


Jing Tian-Zorner was considered to be too old and if I recall correctly she sued in order to ve allowed to start at the German nationals.

[chung]

It is interesting, in this connection, that China, which really has no shortage of top players, also imports foreign talent to play in their leagues (although I don't think we will see any foreigners playing on their national teams!). they recently announced that Li Jiawei (she was born in China but immigrated to Singapore years ago and plays for them) and Chiang Penglung will be playing in the professional league for Shanghai. the chiang penglung agreement is not yet confirmed because of some China-Taiwan complication, though.

[Markus Graph]

In China, there is a professional league, too?
I thought, there would only be tournaments!

[chung]

@markus graph:

yes, there is a league in china too. Actually, the information i gave was wrong: chiang peng-lung and li jia-wei are going to play for a club called Shandong Luneng, not Shanghai.

The league is called the China Superleague, and the club Shandong Luneng is a very good club. The men came in first place in the league, and will play in the World Table Tennis Club Tournament in Macau in June.

I don't know who the other clubs are (they are a total of 12).

[Scheibinho]

Did the top chinese-players (Kong Linghui, Wang Liqin, Liu ,Ma Lin Guoliang, Liu Guozheng) play in these leauge too:confused: :confused:

[chung]

@scheibinho:

Yes, these players play in the China superleague. If you recall, last year the ETTU almost refused to allow Ma Lin and Liu Guoliang to play for Niederösterreich in the 2000 Champions League because they had already played for another club in the China Superleague at the end of 1999.

[Scheibinho]

Did one of these chinese players play next season in europe?