Egypt qualifies to second round as Nigeria leads African exit at ITTF WTTC

The Egyptian women’s team qualified to the second-round stage of the ongoing 2024 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships (WTTTC) taking place in South Korea after finishing second in their group at the tournament.

However, Egypt’s men team finally managed to salvage a victory against Thailand in all their matches in South Korea, as Nigeria leads the exit of African teams from the tournament.

Egypt, drawn in the same group as Romania, Iran, Portugal, and Thailand, were winless from the start of the competition, but the African champion salvaged a 3-1 win over Thailand to finish fourth in the group ahead of Thailand.

Unlike Egypt, African teams such as Nigeria, Algeria, South Africa, and Madagascar have all exited the tournament in the first round.

Nigeria considered as one of the heavyweights in Africa suffered early setback following the withdrawal of their talisman Quadri Aruna over food poisoning and this affected the team’s chances as one the duo of Olajide Omotayo and Bode Abiodun played against Chinese Taipei, Madagascar, and Czech Republic, while the team also got a walkover against Japan on day one of the competition.

Also, their women’s team were not exempted from the exit as they finished at the bottom of the group which has Germany, Mexico, Slovakia, and Poland as they were beaten 3-0 by all the other four teams to be rooted to the bottom of the table.

Same fate also befell South Africa and Algerian men and women teams as they failed to record any record in all their matches.

But the Egyptian women’s team led by Dina Meshref gave the continent something to cheer after finishing second in Group 8 behind France. The African champion defeated Czech Republic, Ukraine, and Croatia while they suffered their only defeat against France to advance to the second round of the competition.

Meanwhile, former African Games champion Edem Offiong has blamed poor outing of the African teams on lack of preparation while acknowledging that the tournament would help to prepare teams for next month’s African Games in Ghana.