Interview with Steffen Mengel (Post SV Mühlhausen): “There is concern about staying in the league”

Contrary to most predictions, Post SV Mühlhausen are still bottom of the table in the German Table Tennis League (TTBL) after the first four match days of the post-Olympic season without a win. Former national player Steffen Mengel talks in an interview about the effects of the false start, changed objectives and the Thuringians' ambitions in the Champions League following their transfer coup with the signing of Chinese top 10 stars Liang Jingkun and Lin Gaoyuan.

Steffen Mengel, your Post SV Mühlhauen started out as a play-off contender but was eliminated in the first round of the cup and is still waiting for its first win of the season after the first four match days in the German Table Tennis League (TTBL). Has the season already been ruined for your team before it has really started?

Well, the season has at least started badly, we have to be honest. You can get knocked out of the cup at TSV Bad Königshofen, that can happen. But in the TTBL, things didn't go as we'd hoped. All of us have fallen short of our potential, and you can see that in black and white in the league table.

For what reasons has the limit not yet been reached?

I can only speak for myself: I haven't been able to play my best table tennis yet. I've been too erratic in my game, I need to become more consistent. But on the other hand, for us as a team, as is often the case in sport, it was sometimes just nuances. We almost got into the doubles against Borussia Dortmund and we even led in the doubles against Werder Bremen. But just as you can ride a wave of success with more and more self-confidence, failure with less and less self-confidence can lead to successive failures. We have to make sure that we turn things around quickly and play another good season.

Before the start of the season, a role in the battle for the play-off places would certainly have been a good, or at least acceptable, result for Mühlhausen. But can the play-off places still be a realistic goal?

If you've lost the first four games like we have, you shouldn't be so presumptuous as to look upwards. We have to go step by step and try to finally reward ourselves with a win again. But the best way to do that is to focus on ourselves first.

You only want to look at yourself and not upwards. But where you are at the moment is at the bottom. Should Mühlhausen be worried about relegation?

We are worried about staying in the league. Anyone can read the table, we're hardly the favorite in any of the games and we haven't even played the strongest teams in the league yet. TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell have also tried to play in the play-offs in the last two years and have only finished second last each time. That could happen to us too.

This realization doesn't exactly allow you to play with confidence, does it?

Some time ago, we started a season with four defeats, but then won nine or ten times in a row. But this time the starting position is different because all the teams are so evenly matched. That's why there's pressure, which we've brought on ourselves. We have to focus all our energies as much as possible.

Mühlhausen's false start is all the more striking after the sensation caused by your club's coup in signing the two world-class Chinese players Liang Jingkun and Lin Gaoyuan for the Champions League. Is there a connection?

I don't think the news about Liang and Lin played a role in our first Bundesliga appearances. It was clear for a long time that they would come for the Champions League games because of the ever-increasing pressure on the players.

But hasn't the fuss about your future teammates inevitably distracted you from everyday life?

No, and we're also delighted: it's a really big deal for our little town of Mühlhausen that China is letting senior players out again for the first time in several decades and then letting them play for us instead of Borussia Düsseldorf or 1 FC Saarbrücken-TT. That's something very special for us - but not a distraction from everyday league life.

Can a good Champions League result, especially because of the two Chinese players, still save the season?

Of course, the Champions League is the competition in which practically anything is possible with a good top player. We also know that we no longer have to worry about the play-offs in the TTBL and that the Champions League is our best chance.

The biggest chance of what exactly?

The semi-final is our big goal. We don't have to hide ourselves at all: We are favorites in the group stage and, as group winners, we can avoid the top-seeded teams from Saarbrücken and Düsseldorf in the round of 16 and quarter-finals.

Thank you very much for the interview, Steffen Mengel.

Interview: Florian Manzke