In the Table Tennis Bundesliga (TTBL), FSV Mainz 05 has already lost the battle to stay in the league.
The Rheinhessen, which is also threatened with relegation in the upper house of football, announced on their club homepage six match days before the end of the points round that they were waiving a license for the coming season “regardless of possible sporting qualifications”.
Due to the voluntary withdrawal of the second-to-last team in the second division, the relegation battle in the German elite class has already been decided. Given that there are currently only eleven first division teams instead of the planned twelve, only one club would have had to go to the lower house anyway. The beneficiary of the Mainz decision – subject to a new license for the coming season – is the current bottom team TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell.
Mainz made it into the upper house in 2022 thanks to the financial support of its footballers. However, the newcomer was only able to keep the class a year ago because no second division team had applied for a TTBL license. However, in order to remain competitive, the FSV now explained its decision, “the league makes economic demands that cannot be met in the long term.”
The contenders for Mainz’s place and the vacant “position” in the top class are considered to be frontrunners Borussia Dortmund and the second-placed former Bundesliga club TTC OE Bad Homburg in the second league before the deadline for license applications at the end of the month. Both clubs have already confirmed their interest in promotion several times.
In Mainz, the club says it wants to focus on promoting its own young talent in the future. The five players from the current TTBL team as well as coach Felix Schmidt-Arndt and sports director Tomas Kasica will leave the club at the end of the season. The changes of the Luxembourg national player Luka Mladenovic to league rivals TTC Zugbrücke Grenzau and the Chinese-born Li Yongyin to Dortmund have already been confirmed.