The last game of Timo Boll

29 years Bundesliga. 20 times at a World Cup. 20 times European champions in singles, doubles or with the team. Four times the number one in the world rankings. With this career, Timo Boll plays in a historical comparison in a league with sports legends such as Boris Becker, Michael Schumacher or his close friend Dirk Nowitzki. If you think of table tennis in Germany, you immediately think of the name Boll.

It is a deep cut for his sport when this career ends in Frankfurt am Main next Sunday. The playoff final of the table tennis Bundesliga between his club Borussia Düsseldorf and the German cup winner TTF Ochsenhausen (1 p.m./Dyn) is the last game in Boll’s long career.

The 44-year-old says openly: «I have been playing table tennis since I am three or four and have been doing this professional since I was 15 or 16. If you don’t know any other lifestyle, you are of course afraid of the moment that it says: Now it is over. »

But he also says: «The fight against the interior. To feel that as a perfectionist, I no longer get to my highest level »: It was more and more difficult for him. «For me, Olympia in Paris was again a big anchor and a big goal. Stopping now feels somehow. »

The big question is: what’s coming now? What does Boll do after he has rushed to continent from continent for more than two decades? From Bundesliga game to international tournament – and about 300 days a year.

He has enough opportunities. His friend and national team colleague Patrick Franziska offered him to become his trainer. With his favorite football club Borussia Dortmund, he talks about various ideas: Boll as a door opener for BVB in table tennis wonderland China. Or Boll as an intern at BVB to learn something about corporate structures and sports management. « Nothing is yet ready for saying, » he said in a media round of the streaming platform Dyn about the big documentary « Timo Boll – the last serve ».

The most likely variant is: Boll does nothing at first, goes on vacation with his family and spends the time with his wife and daughter that he has never had in recent years. Because the table tennis star was always popular through what he is not: not a speaker, not a whip. « Type deep forklift, » he calls himself.

In 2005 he flew to the World Championships in Shanghai in 2005 and ended up at the top of the podium. But Boll was not given a medal there, but the Fair Play Prize. In the round of 16, he played against the Chinese Liu Guozheng, had a match ball in the seventh set and the referee already declared the German as the winner because his opponent took this ball. But Boll indicated that the ball had still touched the edge of the table slightly, the point belongs to the Chinese. Except for him, nobody in the hall had noticed. He had left two rallies later.

That is the difference to Boris Becker or Michael Schumacher: The sport of table tennis was always too small and her best -known face was too reserved to create a large hype from this combination. Nevertheless, Boll got everything out of his career.

In Frankfurt or Berlin he can walk through the pedestrian zone undisturbed, in Beijing or Shanghai it doesn’t work. Table tennis is especially in China the all outshone sport. Boll has brought a lot of money to be the advertising perspective of German companies.

« The fact that he stops now feels a bit like a part of me ends, » says Dimitrij Ovtcharov. The 36-year-old was also number one in the world, won the World Cup, two EM titles and, unlike Boll, two Olympic medals in singles.

Similar to Michael Stich and Boris Becker, Ovtcharov always stood a little in the shadow of Boll. The big difference is only: the two table tennis stars were close friends right from the start.

« I will miss his serenity, » says Ovtcharov. «That he just sits there at Olympics or a World Cup, exudes a calm and makes his coffee: I got used to it. The first one or two tournaments without him were a little more stressful. »

Now Boll only has one game in front of him. And he is glad that there is another title. « I think it has to be that it tingles again and really hurt, » he says. To say goodbye to the German championship with Borussia Düsseldorf – it would be the 15th in his career.