Nina Mittelham would like to smash the TTC eastside again on Friday after 2020 to win the Champions League.
Photo: imago images/Revierfoto
On Sunday evening table tennis fans were treated to an exciting final first leg in the Champions League. They lost with the TTC Eastside Berlin 2:3 in Tarnobrzeg. What is your conclusion?
We didn’t get into the game well and were quickly 2-0 down. We hadn’t imagined it that way, and we knew that from then on it would be incredibly difficult to win. It was important that Britt Eerland brought us back into the game with her win against Elizabeta Samara and I was then able to equalize against Han Ying. Even if we lost in the end, everything is still open in the second leg on Friday: if we finish 3-0 or 3-1, we’ll win straight away. If it’s 3:2, we still reach the golden match. So nothing has been decided yet. And that’s the best we could take with us.
How does this golden match work? That’s new this season.
When that happens, three encounters are drawn at random, so chance determines which opponent you encounter. And only one set is played each time. The team that gets two of those three sets wins. Basically, it’s unpredictable.
At least it sounds very exciting. Have you had any experience with this?
No, that would be a first for me. But yes, of course that makes it more exciting.
Apparently you have no problem with tight decisions: In December 2020 you decided the final of the Champions League in the very last set of the very last duel. On Sunday you were 2-1 down against your national team colleague Han Ying and turned the game around. For years, Han was the best European ever. Do you ever get nervous in such situations?
Of course you’re nervous. Otherwise something would be wrong. But you have to be able to deal with it. In the past few years I have simply been in such situations very often and have learned to deal with this nervousness. Even if you don’t play your best table tennis, you can still improve. And then you can still win things. So I won a lot of games for myself. And that in turn gives me confidence. I know now: I can do it, no matter how hopeless it may seem right now.
Han is a defense specialist. Many people don’t like that because their attack hits come back so unpleasantly. They didn’t seem to have any problems with that on Sunday. Do you like defenders?
I can’t even say who I prefer to play against. But when I was very young I was able to train a lot against defense specialists. I still benefit from that today. The older you get, the more difficult it is to adapt to such a game system. I don’t have that problem. Of course, I also know Han very well. We have often played together and train together in the German Table Tennis Center in Düsseldorf. Knowing each other that well gives the attacker an advantage, I would argue.
In fact, Bundesliga teams almost never train together, they only get together for games. Will that be different at least this week before this so important second leg of the final?
No, we flew to Düsseldorf again. My teammate Shan Xiaona also trains here. We will only train together again as a team in Berlin on Friday morning. The conditions in Düsseldorf are simply ideal for us. We are in our normal environment, we have our family here. The feel-good factor plays a major role in order to be able to perform at your best. This charges the energy reserves.
You will finally get energy from the fans again on Friday. Are you looking forward to many spectators now that the last corona measures in Berlin have been lifted?
Yes, of course, that will certainly be special because there have always been very few in the last two years. And when the hall is full, it pushes you even more. I think there’s a lot more surprises possible.
Would it be a surprise if Berlin wins the second leg? After all, TTC Eastside have won the Champions League five times since 2012.
I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty match, even though Tarnobrzeg is actually the favourite. But there is always a lot of pressure in Berlin, because everyone here assumes that we will be German champions, cup winners and champions league winners again. But you saw in the cup, when we failed in the semi-finals, that it’s never a sure-fire success. We have to prove time and time again that all the titles of the last few years weren’t hits by chance. But that’s also why I came to Berlin to develop under this pressure. In the first leg against Tarnobrzeg we saw that we could have lost 3-0 or won 3-1. Everything is possible. And on Friday it certainly won’t be boring.
