On a day of farewells, the Liebher Ochsenhausen, Hugo Calderano’s team, won the Bundesliga for the fifth time in its history by overcoming on Sunday (15), 3-2, the traditional Borussia Düsseldorf.
The Brazilian’s team confirmed the favoritism, as they had won their rival on two occasions in the qualifying phase, and gave Timo Boll, a table tennis legend, a bitter goodbye to his professional career.
Calderano even defeated the German in the opening match of the final. The current number 3 of the world ranking dominated the first two games, lost the third and fourth and won the partial final by 11 to 9, in an electrifying dispute, in which Boll showed, at 44, why he built a long and bright trajectory.
Even before the game begins, the German table was received an ovation, with the 5,000 fans at the Süwag Energie Arena in Frankfurt standing, a tribute deserved to a player who will be remembered not only for the technical quality, but also for the friendly personality, good mood and the head in the head.
He returned to the table in the decisive double, after the clash reached 2-2: Frenchman Simon Gauzy, Calderano’s companion, lost to Dang Qiu, who also beat the Brazilian when the final marked 2-1 to Ochsenhausen. Before, the Japanese Shunsuke Togami had surpassed Swedish Anton Kallberg, with peace of mind. In the final game, Gauzy and Togami won from Boll and Kallberg 3-0 and secured the title.
Now, Boll, a former world ranking leader in 2003 and 2018, winner of four Olympic medals-silver and two bronze-and present in 8 of Borussia’s 34 Bundesliga cups, finishes his career in full, as he had stopped playing international events after Paris games.
The defeat is even more painful because his team also lost, earlier this month, the Champions League final to Saarbrücken, a club that will have among its athletes Fan Zhendong, current Olympic champion. The Chinese surprised fans after Paris by announcing that he would no longer play WTT events and hinted that he would retire, but returned to the Chinese league and now signed with the German team.
The Bundesliga Cup also marks the farewells of Calderano and Gauzy of Ochsenhausen. The Brazilian leaves after nine seasons in two passages, and the Frenchman, after 12 years at the club-he will return to his country, now dominated by brothers Felix, 18, and Alexis Lebrun, 21. Calderano has not yet defined his postochsonhausen plans, with the possibility of devoting himself only to international WTT events.
The German team will still have a Brazilian, Paulista Leonardo Iizuka, 19, who also participated in the title campaign, even though he did not play the final. He and the Portuguese Tiago Abiodun complete the team.
The season that ends with the departure of its top two athletes was amazing for Ochsenhausen, which also won the German Cup. For Calderano, win the Bundesliga for the second time crown the good phase you live. The Brazilian shocked the sport by winning the World Cup and reaching the runner-up at the World Cup, thus bringing the first medal in the history of the tournament to a southern hemisphere player.
In the Bundesliga, Calderano paraded and lost only two of the 22 matches he played this season of the German league. It was from afar the engine of the team and the main responsible for Ochsenhausen to become champion.
