TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen get a new face - team captain Gauzy stays
TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen are making fundamental changes to their squad after this season. This was announced by the Bundesliga table tennis club on Saturday. Four of the six players in the current squad as well as Head Coach Yong Fu will be leaving the club. The pack of four includes Can Akkuzu, who beat record European champion Timo Boll 3:2 at the start of the season, and 20-year-old top talent Hayate Sukuki. Team captain Simon Gauzy, on the other hand, has extended his contract and will remain the face of the club.
TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen's personnel planning for the new season continues to progress. With Alvaro Robles and Hayate Suzuki, two more players will leave the club after the current season. The departure of Can Akkuzu and Samuel Kulczycki had already been made public. This means that four of the six professional players in this year's Bundesliga team will be leaving, which also means that the face of the squad will change from 01.07.2024.
“We had various discussions and ultimately agreed that a change had to be made,” said club president Kristijan Pejinovic on the “realignment”. In 2019, Ochsenhausen celebrated the fourth championship in the club's history; this season, the Upper Swabians are in sixth place. The traditional club clearly missed out on the semi-finals.
Pejinovic plans to present the first results of the reorganization in the coming days. There is already a new head coach: Bogdan Pugna, who previously worked in talent development in Ochsenhausen, will take over responsibility for the Bundesliga team from July 1.
In addition, top performer and team captain Simon Gauzy will remain with the club. The Frenchman, who is ranked number 24 in the world and has been at Ochsenhausen since 2013, will stay for at least another year. “It will now be my twelfth season and it all feels like home,” said the 29-year-old: “Especially after this difficult season, we want to do better again and reach the play-offs in the 2023/24 season.”
Source: SID/TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen
Featured image above: Simon Gauzy (Photo: Nicolai Schaal)