On October 12, in Barcelona, Spain, the men's table tennis World Cup began. Although the most popular sport in this land is football, the prestige of the Cosmos team has not yet become famous at this time.

Ye Hao due to a muscle strain during the Chinese table tennis competition, although he has recovered after resting for more than half a month, but in the next training, he was injured again, and the national table tennis coaching staff did not let him participate in this World Cup, but hoped that he could completely heal his shoulder injury, because he was really indispensable in next year's local Olympic Games.

Due to Ye Hao's absence, this table tennis World Cup, like the Chinese Table Tennis Championships, made the hearts of the other participating players ready to move. Although even if Ye Hao participates, others will not give up the goal of winning the championship, but it is difficult to say how sure they are in their hearts.

As for now, without Ye Hao, the world table tennis world has ushered in a short "new era". A hundred flowers are blooming, a hundred boats are competing, and all the top table tennis players are gearing up. After Ye Hao's comeback, the suspense of the championship of the three major table tennis competitions has suddenly decreased a lot, and now people can finally look forward to who can take this opportunity to win the championship.

A total of 16 athletes participated in the men's table tennis World Cup, and they were divided into four groups with a round-robin match, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the knockout stage.

The four athletes of the Chinese team were divided into three groups, which means that Wang Liqin and Ma Long's B make up the group of death in this World Cup. As for Ma Lin and Wang Hao, they are in Group A and Group D respectively.

There is not much suspense about qualifying for Group A, and in addition to Marin's steady victory, Yoo Seungmin's hopes are also very high. As long as these two can play normally, the remaining Spanish local player Dulang and Liu Song, who represented Argentina, have no chance at all.

In fact, it is true that Marin and Yoo Seungmin have already qualified early after beating two other athletes in their first two games of the group stage. The final match was played between the two, and the result was that Marin had a slight advantage, winning with an aggregate score of 4:2.

In Group B, in addition to the two Chinese players Ma Long and Wang Liqin, there are also Chinese Taipei's Zhuang Zhiyuan and South Korea's Zhu Shihyuk. It can be said that in terms of lineup, the strength of this group is the strongest, as can be seen by averaging their world rankings. Due to the format of the competition, it is inevitable that there will be some low-ranked athletes in other groups, but the members of this group are all ranked in the top 20 in the world, which shows the fierce competition.

Although the competition pressure in Group B is high, it also depends on people, such as Ma Long and Wang Liqin, although they also have pressure, but compared to the other two, they are insignificant. After all, in terms of strength, the two horses have the upper hand.

However, the order of competition in this group is relatively unfavorable for the two athletes of the Chinese team. Because the first group game was a civil war between the two of them. As a result, Malone was in better shape, and he defeated Big Brother 4:1 to get a blood.

Wang Liqin lost one game, so in the next match against Zhuang Zhiyuan and Zhu Shihe, he had to pay attention, because if he wants to advance, he must win the remaining two games, and he can't lose a single one.

In the match with Zhuang Zhiyuan, Wang Liqin entered the state much faster than usual, and it was obvious that he also learned the lesson of the last loss to Ma Long. Therefore, in this game, he played well, and used his strong forehand strength to beat Taiwan's first brother to the southeast and northwest, and swept the opponent 4:0.

However, the next match with Zhu Shihe made Wang Liqin spend a lot of effort. The brightest period of Zhu Shihe's career was the 2003 World Table Tennis Championships in Paris, France, where he eliminated Marin to advance to the men's singles semifinals.

However, since then, Zhu Shihyuk's performance in the world table tennis arena has not been eye-catching, compared to his other two companions, Liu Chengmin and Wu Shangyin, especially the former, is still a lot worse.

However, although Zhu Shihyuk can only be regarded as the No. 3 singles in the South Korean team, his chipping style still makes Wang Liqin struggle a lot in this game. Like Xiao Qiang, who can never be killed, Zhu Shihe's vitality is amazing, and his defensive counterattack is impressive, which has caused a lot of trouble for Wang Liqin.

However, as the game deepened, with the continuous loss of Zhu Shihe's physical strength, Wang Liqin's advantage continued to expand. His powerful forehand smash left Joo's defence shaky. In the end, Wang Liqin defeated the opponent 4:2 and took an hour and a half to win the game.

Compared with Wang Liqin's arduous group stage experience, Ma Long's situation in this group is much smoother. First defeated Wang Liqin in the first game, and then won the game with Zhuang Zhiyuan and Zhu Shihe, he also won easily, and finally ranked first in the group with a winning record and successfully advanced to the quarterfinals.

Wang Hao's Group D is composed of himself, Samsonov, Gao Ning and Paul Pitt. Judging from the lineup, the latter two are obviously the characters of soy sauce, and the result of the game also proves this.

Wang Hao first swept Paul Pitt 4:0 to get the first victory, then defeated Gao Ning Nu 4:1 to win the second blood, and finally won 4:1 Samsonov to achieve a complete victory. Except for the third game loss to Wang Hao, Samsonov also won the other two games smoothly, and the two of them advanced together.

Bol, Schrager, Wu Shangyin and Saleh are in Group C, although there are no Chinese players in this group, but the competition intensity is not low, and the first three are very strong.

However, when the game began, everyone found out that Schrager, the runner-up of the Paris World Table Tennis Championships, had declined significantly due to age. In the first match against Wu Shangyin, he was beaten 0:4 by the opponent and lost the game without any fightback.

Subsequently, the situation of this group also became clear, and Bol and Wu Shangyin met in the third game of the group stage after defeating two other opponents respectively. As a result, Bol defeated Wu Shangyin 4:2 and qualified for the first place in the group.

The competition for the group stage of the Barcelona World Cup is over, and the top eight players who have entered the knockout round are the four members of the Chinese table tennis team, Er Wang and Er Ma, and the two of the South Korean team, Yoo Seungmin and Oh Sang-yun, as well as Germany's Boll and Belarus' Samsolov.