(by Steve Hopkins)
The Final Four are now set for Europe’s Champions League. Three of those teams are not unexpected – Borussia Dusseldorf has Top 20 players Dang Qiu and Anton Kallberg, and Neu-Ulm has their pair of top players in Ovtcharov and Moregard, and Saarbrucken’s top pair of Franziska and Jorgic account for why these squads are the top three top seeds. The fourth team, however, is a surprise.
Austria’s SolexConsult TTC Wiener Neustadt won Group C of the Champions League. The Neustadt squad lacks the recognizable names of their competitors, but that didn’t keep them from going undefeated. Japan’s Jin Ueda was the anchor of the team with Ivor Ban and Frane Kojic filling out the roster. The favorite in this group was originally France’s GV Hennebont TT with Kristian Karlsson, Chuang Chih-Yuan, and Anders Lind on the roster, but as the year progressed they played with Sidorenko, Matsushita, and Gillen (and with this squad they finished 0-4 in the group. The team in the group was Poland’s KS Dekorglass Dzialdowo (with Jonathan Groth, Patryk Lewandowski, and Konishi Kaii), but they lost both matches against Neustadt and finished 2-2 in second.
The Champions League Final Four is scheduled for March 31 and April 1.
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