The two traditional powers in European table tennis, Germany and Sweden, have experienced extremely different situations in the past ten years or so.
There are many German masters. Bayer is almost the pinnacle of the sea. It is undefeated all year round and has frightening stability. Then Wolf rises. Although it is not as scary as Bayer, it also has an extremely brilliant record in Europe, but it has been slightly quiet in the past two years.
But it's not important, because before Wolf entered its trough, Sissifield rose again.
Sissifield's state is extremely unstable, but he is tall, long-legged, and extremely powerful. When he goes crazy, his terrifying backhand quality can even compete with Hook. He is a weirdo with extremely high upper limit and extremely low lower limit.
This would have been scary enough, but in recent years, new players have emerged from Germany, such as the Chinese player Qiu Shang who has made a small splash in Hong Kong Open this time.
In fact, Qiu Shang also has a doubles partner who is of equal strength, and both of them are extremely favored by Rohlskov.
The reason why Deutsche Deutschland has been prosperous over the years is due to their very complete domestic club league, which has attracted a large number of players from Europe to play. Therefore, Germany has done an impressive job both in terms of overall level and subsequent talent training.
Relatively speaking, Sweden is like a run-down aristocracy with no successors.
Old Wa was once known as the number one player in the world's table tennis world. To this day, he still has the supreme status.
This man once suppressed the entire Huaping team by himself. Huaping team took three to four generations to attack Old Wa and study Old Wa. In the end, he did not dare to say that he really defeated Old Wa.
What really defeats Old Wa is time.
At that time, Sweden was not only the king of European table tennis, but also the king of world table tennis.
But after that, Sweden never gave birth to a legendary player.
k. Michel and his brother m. Michel are the only pillars of Sweden over the years. They cannot be said to be weak. One is ranked more than ten in the world, and the other is ranked in the dozens. In other countries, they are like Taishan and Beidou.
However, in Sweden, facing a senior Old Wa who had been ranked number one in the world for a long time, their achievements seemed too insignificant.
The Swedes look at the Germans just like the old aristocrats look at a group of guys with impure blood who have stolen high positions. They are sour, just because there is a real gap in strength, so they can only close the door to make lemonade, and lack the courage to challenge head-on.
But today the opportunity really came.
All German players have been eliminated so far, but Swede Michel still has a slim hope.
The attention of this Open can be said to be the highest in the past 10 years. Michel knows very well that if he can win Wang Chao today, he will become the pride of Sweden, the pride of Europe, and the pride of the world table tennis world.
Even if he was tortured by Pike in the finals, fans will still remember his name, and a considerable number of fans will definitely stand up and shout:
"Pike has never met a Chinese table tennis player. This championship has no gold content."
"It was Michel who eliminated Wang Chao. Michel is the uncrowned king of this Open."
"He only lost to Pike because he was overdrafted when playing Wang Chao. Pike took advantage of others' danger and won without using force."
"Sure enough, we still have to rely on Sweden to beat China Table Tennis Team. I think of Old Wa."
Yes, that's it. European fans have such complicated feelings towards Huaping. On the one hand, they pray that players from their own countries will not encounter Huaping, and on the other hand, they pray that other European players will encounter Huaping.
If the champion of a certain competition is not a player from your own country, then it should simply be a Chinese table tennis player. Because Chinese table tennis is unattainable, everyone does not have too real jealousy and comparison. However, if the association next door wins the championship, it will affect the ranking of domestic players.
It's just so realistic.
Table tennis associations all over the world admit this: if you have not met a Chinese table tennis player, even if you win a gold medal, it will not have gold content.
This is called "Chinese Table Tennis certification".
Wang Chao has been having bad luck recently, but today his luck seems to have changed. He finally guessed the coin and got the initial right to serve.
He chose to send a short backspin, and the landing point was towards the opponent's backhand.
Player Michel is astonishingly tall and has astonishing arm lengths. He is able to achieve his current results. In terms of pure skills, he is actually no different from other European professional players, mainly because he has three major advantages.
First, the platform area is large enough.
Second, it is powerful enough.
The third is that he is better at changing lines.
So in the eight-to-four game against Lu Feiyang, he fought violence with violence.
Lu Feiyang has a strong desire to attack both his forehand and backhand. He charged and hit hard at the beginning, thinking that he could directly knock Michel into confusion, but in the end, Michel retreated without any scruples., thereby slowing down Lu Feiyang's ball speed, and then started various forward looping shots on the table, combining forward and reverse, Attacking from all sides, completely knocked down Lu Feiyang's momentum.
This is because Lu Feiyang is too young and thinks that his offensive power is explosive. Little does he know that the most taboo thing for Asian players when facing European players is pure strength.
Later, Lu Feiyang accepted the advice of off-court coach Zhu Zeshi and started to play control. However, because he did not practice this style of play enough, his playing was bumpy and the effect was not good. Michel on the contrary He showed very good control of the small ball in the table, so he kept playing. It was not Lu Feiyang that controlled Michel, but Michel controlled Lu Feiyang.
So Lu Feiyang had no chance. Even though he fought like crazy and tried his best to make a comeback, he was still defeated by Michel in the top eight.
Looking at the whole game, Lu Feiyang's defeat was firstly due to the wrong opening strategy, secondly because of insufficient preparation of backup tactics, and finally because of a bad mentality, which caused chaos in the middle of the game.
Wang Chao had watched the video of this game last night and made an analysis. He believed that the reason why Michel was able to beat Lu Feiyang by controlling the ball was not because of how strong he was with the small ball in the table, but because Lu Feiyang's mentality was already unstable at the time and he could not really display more than 70% of his strength.
In fact, Michel's on-table ball can only be said to be slightly better than the general level in Europe, but it is far from being on par with Asian players.
Therefore, the strategy to deal with Michel is also very clear and obvious at a glance, that is to fight against shortcomings.
When Michel, who is 1.9 meters tall, faces a short ball close to the table, no matter how good his hand is, he still has to bend down or bend his legs when catching the ball. In any case, the degree of body bending is greater than that of a player of normal height, which makes him very uncomfortable.
Facing Wang Chao's serve, Michel's choice was to rub the ball directly to the baseline.
He 100% refuses to play short, and must hit the ball longer. He would rather be kicked off than play Zhang Fei's embroidery job.
But he underestimated Wang Chao's serve.
The first ball seems to be an ordinary ball with short backspin, but in fact this ball does not spin.
Michel With this flick, the ball shot up and flew far away from the table.
Wang Chao served directly and scored 1:0.
Wang Chao continues to serve, and the initial position is still short backspin.
Michel stared at Wang Chao's wrist movements this time, determined to keep an eye on it until the last moment.
He was not worried that he would not be able to react because the short backspin serve itself was not fast and he had enough time to react.
But what he didn't expect was that at the last moment when the racket touched the ball, Wang Chao suddenly raised his elbow, the racket quickly stood up from the horizontal direction, and with a sharp move forward, he actually made an extremely fast topspin ball.
In fact, feinting when serving is also a double-edged sword. If you want to deceive people, then you will not be able to use your full strength. You can only change the direction of the racket to rub the ball at the last moment. The faster the friction speed, the better, and the shorter the friction process, the better. This will reduce the quality of the ball.
And if you go too far with your fake moves, you may even be unable to hold back the momentum at the last moment, resulting in a deformed serving posture, or even suicide.
But the feel of Wang Chao is very crucial at this time. His Bullet Serve can be said to have perfected the fake action in the first half, but the final change is still completely in place in terms of arc, strength and angle. So the ball is like a white lightning, piercing the bottom line of the table in Michel's right hand.
Michel didn't have time to react and let the ball fly away from his side.
Although his height of 1.9 meters has a huge advantage in protecting the platform, he also has disadvantages in flexibility. The Wang Chao serve is essentially nothing more than a Sneak Long Serve. If it were a smaller Asian No matter how bad the player is, he can retreat and barely save a score. If it is Lin Zijun who has Extreme Speed Talent, he can even directly attack, but if he changes to Michel, he doesn't move at all.
2:0.
Wang Chao served and scored two points directly.
Michel gets the right to serve.
He stood in front of the stage, bared his teeth, and looked a little depressed.
Of course he knew that Wang Chao's basic strategy to beat him was to fight short. He also knew that this game was at a disadvantage, so he actually planned to fight hard.
The so-called desperate means that when you can't find a flaw in your opponent, you just ignore it and fight with your eyes closed.
You sent a forehand with a short backspin, and I hit you desperately.
You sent a backhand with a short backspin, and I twisted and pulled it desperately.
Although fighting like this is a bit rough, the victory is that it is full of momentum. You can exert crazy strength, sweat like crazy, shout like crazy, fight out your energy, and fully enhance the national dignity and national integrity. Even if you lose, you will lose like a hero. Even if you lose 4:0, you will never be blamed by Swedish fans after you return home.
But he didn't expect that Wang Chao would put so many psychological games into even a mere short backspin, making it impossible for him to be tragic at all. Isn't it too much?
At this moment, he wanted to ask: Weren't you very upright when you were playing Bayer?
tmd Bayer is so insidious, but you are upright with him.
I'm so upright, you want to play tricks on me?
Little did he know that Wang Chao at this time was already at another level compared to the previous game.
The matter of cultivating a king's heart is, in a sense, contradictory in itself.
A player obviously has an unparalleled court strategy, but now he refuses to let you use it and forces you to play head-on. This is actually unreasonable in a truly international competition. This can only be said to be completely weight-bearing training imposed by the players themselves under certain special circumstances.
The purpose of carrying weights is to develop feelings, and once you find the feeling, you can naturally unload the weights.
Last year's Wang Chao played too strangely, so when encountering an opponent, he habitually wanted to take the wrong approach. This is of course wrong because it is too extreme.
He Jingping reminded Wang Chao during the winter vacation, just hoping that he would not think too much about taking the wrong approach, but it did not mean that Wang Chao would suddenly turn into a reckless man who only knew how to face the situation head-on.
Therefore, the few games before Wang Chao were actually self-pressurizing, just to help myself get rid of the "calculation first" mindset as soon as possible.
Playing Bayer was the most difficult challenge Wang Chao had faced since he put himself under pressure. Even the coaching staff of China Table Tennis Team was not optimistic about this game before the game. Although He Jingping blocked all forced intervention for Wang Chao, Wang Chao is such a smart person. How could he not see how weird the atmosphere of the coaching staff of China Table Tennis Team that afternoon was?
In fact, it was okay if He Jingping didn't block, but once he blocked, Wang Chao's pressure would be even greater, because he knew that if he messed up, Old He would most likely be beaten to death by Cai Guodong, so he was not only burdened with his own future, but also Old He's future.
Despite such great pressure, Wang Chao still did not let go of the burden and entered the official competition still bearing the weight.
After losing the first game, the pressure was overwhelming, but he still endured it.
After losing the second game, Wang Chao finally found something different.
He began to evolve under the high pressure of Bayer, began to polish his knife, and began to eliminate all the flaws. By this time, Wang Chao clearly realized that his mentality was completely different.
When he completed a great comeback under the hellish mental pressure, he officially had the heart of a king.
Even if he faces Sun Tianlong and Luo Jiu in the future, he will never have the thought of "I definitely can't beat him, I have to use extra moves".
So he was relieved of his burden.
Then, a very strange point came naturally: from now on, he can make calculations at will.
A strong man, no matter how he plots, he is still strong.
A weak person, even if he bites the bullet, he is still weak.
What is strong is the mind, not the strength. When you are already strong, then do whatever you want without breaking the rules.
These principles are not mysterious, but they are the same in any sports.
For example, at this moment, Wang Chao is sure that he is 80% sure of defeating Michel in a head-on battle, but why should I stupidly play head-on?
Wouldn't it be better if I added a little calculation and a little change to turn the 80% certainty into a 99% certainty?
It can only be said that Michel is unlucky. He is here to fight, but Wang Chao is here to show off his sword.
What shines brightly is the King's Sword that has just been sharpened by Bayer.
In the first battle of Baodao, Michel, ranked 11th in the world, sacrificed the flag, which is not an injustice to it.