Table tennis: Saarbrücken victory in the drama just before midnight – sport

In professional table tennis, between all the matches, sets and rallies, there is usually quite a lot of music to be heard. When Dang Qiu from Düsseldorf played against Patrick Franziska from Saarbrücken on Monday evening in front of 1,100 spectators in the German Table Tennis Center in Düsseldorf, the hall director sent the song “Highway to Hell” over the loudspeakers. She probably didn’t think anything of it, but this song proved to be a bad sign for her home team Borussia in the decider. At that moment, Düsseldorf was on its way to hell in the Champions League final.

The individual European champion Dang Qiu missed three match points and thus the seventh win of the Champions League for Borussia. Patrick Franziska still won the match, Saarbrücken then equalized an identical first-leg defeat from last Friday with a 3-2 win – and in the all-important extra time, the Saarlanders finally won their first premier class title shortly before midnight after almost five hours of play.

The Champions League season lasted seven months. 24 clubs played a total of 54 games with 211 individual matches, but this long season was only decided in the last rally of the last set of the last encounter. Saarbrücken’s Darko Jorgic defeated Düsseldorf’s Kay Stumper 11:9 in the ultimate final set. Two points made the difference at the very end in a German final.

Saarbrücken’s match winner Franziska also wore a towel around his neck in addition to a medal when he said: “This title is the absolute greatest for me as well as for 1. FC Saarbrücken!” In 2020 you became a champion, in 2022 you won the cup – and now you have won the Champions League. “This is the most prestigious title of all,” said Saarbrücken manager Nicolas Barrois.

There is no extra anthem in the Table Tennis Champions League. There aren’t millions to be won like in football. In table tennis, participation in the Champions League is even a subsidy. But if you win it, it was worth every penny. Over the past 14 years, the competition has featured Borussia Düsseldorf, French club AS Pontoise-Cergy and Russian club Fakel Orenburg. Orenburg won five times, Düsseldorf five times, Pontoise-Cergy twice and it was canceled once each due to Corona (2020) and the Ukraine war (2022).

The Ukraine war caused a break in table tennis

The war led to the exclusion of the Russian clubs, two of which had reached the semi-finals in each of the past four years. Because Pontoise-Cergy didn’t play so well this time, the way to the semi-finals was clear for all four German Champions League participants. Düsseldorf defeated Neu-Ulm and Saarbrücken beat Mühlhausen.

There had never been four German semi-finalists before. “It’s great for German table tennis,” said Franziska, the 2021 Olympic silver medalist with the team. “Many clubs in German table tennis have a long tradition, have grown historically and are therefore so strong and consistent in European comparison,” said Richard Prause, sports director of the German Table Tennis Association.

“After the Russian clubs were excluded, everything in the European clubs is being rearranged,” says Borussia Düsseldorf manager Andreas Preuss. He is a member of the Management Board of the Champions League and says in this function: “We would like to see more competition internationally.” Four semi-finalists from a single country isn’t exactly what a continental federation envisions for its most exclusive competition.

Understandably, that didn’t matter to the people of Saarbrücken. They also celebrated the cup so enthusiastically because they had lost two cup finals, two Bundesliga finals and one Champions League final against Düsseldorf in the past seven years. Düsseldorf had become a curse for the Saarlanders, which they defeated last year by winning the cup final and now by triumphing in the Champions League.

The German international Franziska, the Slovenian Jorgic, the Japanese Takuya Jin and the Belgian Cedric Nuytinck savored the triumph. At Dusseldorf, club legend Timo Boll could only watch. The 42-year-old’s shoulder hurts. Maybe he’ll be fit again when the Bundesliga semi-finals begin. A final between Düsseldorf and Saarbrücken for the third time in a row would not be a surprise. Borussia would then perhaps do without “Highway to Hell”.