Aruna Quadri to debut in ETTU Champions League

By Rilwan Musa Gawu -


Aruna Quadri has scored another first as the Nigerian has become the first
African to feature in the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU) Champions League
this year.
Quadri who plies his trade with Portuguese league champion – Sporting Lisbon will
lead his team in the six-team championship, which kicks off in September across
Europe.
In the seeding for the 16 teams made available to NationSport, Quadri’s Sporting
Lisbon is rated 13 as the only team from Portugal competing against star-studded
teams from Germany, France, Russia, Poland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and Czech
Republic.
An excited Quadri told NationSport yesterday that he cannot wait to compete in
the tournament as the best players in the world feature in the lucrative league.
“I am really so happy that my dream of playing with the best in Europe is
becoming a reality. It is indeed a new challenge for me because my president and
coach are not really happy that we might lose early in the tournament and ended
up not making it to the ETTU Cup for the third placed team in the group of four
teams. They actually wanted us to play the ETTU Cup but our European ranking was
good enough to qualify us for the Champions league and that was why we were
included in the 16-team tournament,” he said.
The 16 team will be drawn into four groups of four teams in each group while the
top two teams in each group advance to the quarterfinal stage. The third place
teams in each group drop to the quarterfinal stage of the ETTU Cup while the
fourth placed teams exit the competition.
The ETTU Champions League reigning champion- Russia’s Orenburg and runner-up –
Germany’s Borussia have unchanged line-ups while newcomer in the league, Poland’s
K.S. Dekorglass Dzialdowo have signed world number seven, Hong Kong’s Chun Ting
Wong.

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