ETTU Congress in Ljubljana Approves New Formats: A Ladder from U15 to the European Championships

In a small hall in Ljubljana, no camera pointed at the delegates' seating. No stands, no scoreboard, no commentators. Only ballots, and behind them an entire generation of young European players who had never been named. When the ETTU Congress approved its new format package, what was voted on was not a specific match but the way wins will be counted for years to come. From 2027, European youth table tennis will score team results by games won; each team tie contains 15 games; the group stage plays all 15; knockout ties stop when a team reaches eight games; singles are best-of-five, including in knockouts. It sounds like an administrative amendment. But I have sat long enough in halls with no television signal to know those numbers are not neutral. They pick the winner before the match begins.

What the Ljubljana Congress changed

The ETTU is the continental governing body operating within the ITTF framework. Its Congress in Ljubljana approved a set of format and event-system changes for the cycle starting in 2027. This is a forward-looking reform package, not breaking news about a match. It does not say who is winning; it says who will get the chance to win over the next five years.

The main items include the 2027 European Youth Championships (U15 and U19, boys' and girls') with a new team format; the Europe Youth Top 10 (U15 and U19) moved to spring; the senior Europe Top 16 Cup with a wild-card mechanism; the European Championships individual events, where automatic youth berths will feed in; and the European Under 21 Championships, already a familiar ladder. Notably, no athlete, coach or equipment brand is named in the communication. This is a document of structure, not of people. And precisely for that reason, it is the kind of document people ignore — until it quietly removes someone from the game.

According to the official ETTU communication following the Ljubljana Congress, the stated goal is to strengthen the pathway from junior success to senior international competition. That phrasing implies something the organisation does not say outright: there is a bottleneck in converting excellent juniors into genuine senior players. The reform package is an attempt to loosen that bottleneck by design rather than by slogan.

Team format: wins counted in games, not matches

The biggest change lies in how team results are calculated. Instead of counting match wins, the ETTU moves to counting games won. Each team tie consists of three matches of three games each, 15 games in total. The team with more games won takes the tie. In the knockout stage, the first team to eight games advances.

This changes the nature of team tactics. When results are measured in games, a squad with even depth benefits over one relying on a single star. A team winning 3-0, 3-0, 3-0 reaches nine games and finishes a tie far faster than a team winning the same number of matches by 3-2 margins, which must play all 15 games. The difference is that you win through efficiency, not merely by overcoming opponents.

This reshapes the role of a team's number one. Under the old format, a dominant player could carry a team with two decisive match wins. Under the new one, her value lies in winning fast and clean to save games for the collective. The hero of the old format won matches. The hero of the new format does not drop games. I once followed a women's team in the Japanese domestic league where the star almost single-handedly dragged the side through each round. When she was injured, the team collapsed within two weeks. A games-based format punishes that model of squad-building more clearly. It forces federations to invest in the second, third and fourth players — the ones audiences do not remember. She is not famous, but I have seen an entire world in every minute on the bench. Now that world may become decisive on the scoreboard.

15 games and the death of the dead rubber

In the group stage, all 15 games are played regardless of which side the result is leaning toward. Under the old format, a tie could end early once a team had won the required matches, turning the remaining games into procedure. People called those dead rubbers. The new format abolishes the concept. Every game carries weight, because total games won determines standings. A player may have already lost her match but must still fight for a single game, because that game could be the difference between advancing and going out. Developmentally this is positive: young players compete more and are placed in situations requiring them to fight to the end rather than capitulate once the tie is settled.

But there is a downside the communication does not mention. If every group tie runs the full 15 games, each team's total workload rises significantly compared with the old format, where a tie could end after three or four matches. This sits in direct tension with the stated rationale for shortening singles to best-of-five: reducing the physical burden on youth. On one hand, the ETTU says it wants to protect young bodies. On the other, it designs a team format that makes each player hit more games per appearance. These two objectives pull in different directions. I do not think this is deliberate contradiction. More likely it is the result of optimising each item separately without a whole-week workload picture. But for a 14-year-old playing both team and singles events, the total is what her body remembers.

Best-of-five: the profile of the winner changes

Youth singles move to best-of-five, including knockouts. Against the best-of-seven standard at senior majors, this carries weight. Shorter matches increase variance. With fewer games, the margin for error compresses, and a slow start can be fatal. Fast starters who attack early and impose rhythm from the first game benefit. Grinders who extend rallies and win through endurance and late momentum lose out. The new format does not merely shorten matches; it selects a type of player.

There is a deeper developmental implication. Senior majors remain best-of-seven. If European youth spend their entire teenage years playing best-of-five, they will enter the senior game without having trained the stamina of a seven-game match, where the sixth or seventh game is decided by the ability to hold technique when the body is tired. That skill cannot be learned in one training session; it forms only through hundreds of long matches. I once filmed a goal nobody remembers, but she never forgot it. In table tennis the decisive points often fall in the sixth or seventh game, when a player has moved past her limit. If youth no longer play to a seventh game, we may be raising a generation strong over short distances but thin over long ones. This is a real trade-off, and the communication does not acknowledge it.

The spring move and the seven-week marker

Another under-noticed change carries large influence: the Europe Youth Top 10 moves to spring, and entry is determined by European rankings published at least seven weeks before the event, rather than the August rankings used previously. This is a change in selection philosophy. August rankings reflect the previous season's results; they reward past performance. The seven-week marker reflects recent form; it rewards current performance. For young players who improve rapidly within months, the difference is enormous. Moving to spring also implies calendar coordination, allowing federations to group trips efficiently. It places weight on peaking at the right time. For young female players there is an additional dimension: girls often face pressure balancing competition, schooling and the physical changes of adolescence. A system rewarding current form may be fairer to those improving now, but harsher on those who need time. Format design is not gender-neutral; it is only neutral to its designers.

The two-way ladder: U15 to U19 to the European Championships

The most ambitious part is the age-band bridges. The reigning U15 Europe Youth Top 10 champion automatically enters the U19 Top 10. The winner of the U19 Top 10 enters the main draw of the European Championships, above the national association quota. The European Under 21 Championships already offers a similar route for the winner, runner-up and losing semi-finalists. This is a two-way ladder: results-based promotion, plus a discretionary senior safety valve. It reflects a familiar tension between quantified merit and human judgement. I care most about its effect on women's teams. When a female U19 player earns a main-draw berth, she brings her federation an extra representative at the continent's flagship event. For lower-resource nations, that berth can be the only door for a young woman to stand on a big court, be seen, and be listed where sponsors look. The ladder is not only a sporting path; it is a financial one. I once followed a female player at an event with no television, working evening shifts to fund training. An automatic main-draw berth can change a career like hers entirely. She does not need to be glorified; she needs to be given a chance.

Wild cards: 2 out of 22

The most contested mechanism is the wild card. Each senior Europe Top 16 Cup event will offer up to two ETTU wild cards, while the field stays at 22 players, with ranking places adjusted accordingly. This is the only point where human judgement replaces quantification. The rest of the system rests on European rankings, the seven-week marker and a fixed 22-player field. Two wild cards are under 10 per cent of the field: a controlled carve-out, not an open door. The stated rationale is that some players' level is not yet reflected in the European rankings. This has real basis: a player returning from long injury, one transitioning between age bands, or a fast-rising newcomer may be missed by the ranking system. In women's sport, where careers are often interrupted by injury and non-counting breaks, such a valve can be a tool of fairness. But it must be said plainly: wild cards cannot be audited from outside. The criteria are not publicly quantified, and a discretionary mechanism can always serve other ends — marketable names, host-nation interests or commercial calculations. I am not saying the ETTU will do that. I am saying that when decisions rest with people and no clear criteria, one must watch how the mechanism is used, not only how it is announced.

Clearing a duplicate-quota gap

A small but welcome detail: the ETTU clarified the case where one player is both European Champion and Europe Top 16 Cup winner. A vacancy now passes to the next highest-ranked player. Such quiet housekeeping shows an organisation proactively closing gaps in its own rules rather than letting them accumulate into disputes. A mature governance system is measured by how it handles the smallest details, not by its grandest statements.

Tracing the money and the broadcast signal

There is a question the communication does not answer, and it is the one I always ask of any format amendment: whom does this serve? Look at the new team structure. Results counted in games, 15 games per tie, all played in the group stage. This is a model guaranteeing a fixed number of games — precisely the design that suits television. When you know a tie will run exactly 15 games, you can schedule broadcasts to the minute. The old format, where a tie could end early, made filling airtime difficult. This does not mean the format exists only for television. It has genuine sporting benefits: more games for young players, competition to the last game, more even development. But when a format is good for both sport and television, people tend to speak only of the sport. I want to speak of both. The problem of European youth table tennis was never only format. It is money. A youth event has no large broadcast contract, no generous sponsors, no paying audience. Reforming the format to make the event more attractive to broadcasters is a way to generate revenue that can flow back into development. That is a logical circle. But it also means sporting decisions are increasingly shaped by commercial logic. I have spent years tracing sponsorship contracts and media priorities in women's sport, and I have learned that commercial value and competitive value do not always coincide. A tournament can become more attractive to television without necessarily becoming better for athlete development. Conversely, a change good for athletes may earn nothing. When these two objectives collide, the one with numbers attached usually wins. For women's table tennis this question is sharper still. Young women's events are often the least invested, least broadcast and least remembered in the system. If format reform is the only way to pull attention to them, it is worth doing. But it also places young female athletes in the position of proving their commercial value before their sporting value is recognised.

What the package does not touch

Here I want to push back on the very package I am analysing. The ETTU builds a ladder from U15 to U19 to the European Championships, grants wild cards to the under-ranked, moves the Top 10 to spring to reward current form. All of this is reform at the level of opportunity — opening doors to more people. But opportunity is only valuable if the person who walks through the door is prepared to succeed. And there the package is silent. The biggest structural weakness of European table tennis is not a lack of competitive opportunity. It is the density of elite coaching and sparring systems. The dominant table tennis nations build their strength on centres where dozens of top players train together daily, sparring at an intensity a single European country struggles to reproduce. A young European may be given a main-draw berth at the European Championships, but if she still trains at a small club with two partners of the same level, that berth becomes a brief experience, not a turning point. In other words, the package broadens the base of the pyramid without adding height to it. It may increase the number of competent Europeans without increasing the number who break into the world's top tier. This is a long-term bet, and its results will appear only after a generation — roughly five to eight years. The package also does not touch competition integrity, discipline or anti-doping. That is reasonable in scope, but it reminds us this is a format reform, not a system reform. It changes how people compete, not how they are trained.

Reflection

The world remembers the champion team; I remember how they embraced after defeat. When the ETTU Congress in Ljubljana voted for the new formats, those most affected are 13- and 14-year-old girls not yet on any ranking list. They will play games designed by people who have never met them. Some stories open only when you sit still and follow a whole season — and the 2027 trial period is exactly when we must sit still and watch. I do not write about the ball; I write about the people who chase it. And over the next few years I will watch whether this package truly opens doors for someone, or merely rearranges the standing of those already in the room.