Today, we saw how China hung on to the tie by virtue of its depth and strength in the singles. They were confident enough to field both their young players and they performed brilliantly. Hopefully China will be able to reproduce their form again against Korea to top the group, as this will also ensure that Denmark enters the semis (This is assuming that Denmark beats Sweden, but Sweden is no pushover). You can call me anti-Korean or whatever, but their statement before the tournament has left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I also sincerely feel that Denmark is better than Korea this time around. The Danes deserve a place in the semis.

Tomorrow, two arch-rivals will clash for the...god knows how many times...But anyway, they will clash and I expect the Indonesians to prevail (hard for me to admit this because I am Malaysian). However, in Thomas cup, and with the 7x5 element, things can become unpredictable. It is hard to guess on the Malaysian side who they will use...a mixture of youth and veterans or just veterans. There are no prize for guesses in the doubles lineup for both sides, but it will be interesting who the singles players will be. Thailand should defeat the Germans, as they have the upper hand in nearly all the ties. The Germans will be formidable in the future if they keep up their training and recruitment programmes, but for now, it is just a learning experience for them.

Yes, I have little doubt that in say five years time, Germany will challenge Denmark as Europe's #1 badminton force. The German juniors are the best in Europe. Germany also has the best organized and financed professional league in Europe, so they have a way to develop the new talents.

an excellent topic. but i see that it is well written and i find it hard to add any more opinion to it.

i too hope that China will be able to prevail over Korea. it will be a real tough battle. both youngster have been performing brilliantly so far. i wonder if Li Yongbo will be continue using them, or try to field Chen Hong at some stage. i fear that if Li release Chen only at the end of the tourny, he may have cool down too much. perhaps the Korean match against Park Tae Sing will be the most appropriate moment..

i do hope the level of european badminton plays are rising. This way, we may have additional influence of badminton into north america.

cooler,

is that generally true? i see there are sports that is popular in the European countries, but never caught on in the sports media in the US. examples are rugby and cricket. rugby in my opinion, is a much more interesting, intricate and tough game than american football. cricket, on the other hand......

soccer has just started to attract some media attention.

kwun,
Badminton has something in common w/soccer that might help us: there are more people who play and are capable of understanding the game, compared to rugby and cricket.

Also, a European women's singles player might rip her shirt off after winning the final, the way Mia Hamm (?) did in the soccer final :-) !

sometime i'm a dreamer :o
Yes, rugby is more interesting to watch than american football but rugby is up against soccer , and cricket is up against baseball for tv audience. Maybe similarly badminton is up against tennis :mad: I hope going on two fronts, one from the asia and another from europe, badminton HAS TO BE popular in north america, right? I'm probably dreaming here.

on the subject of sport popularity. how popular is volleyball in the US?

i can imagine it is pretty popular, in most universities, there are volleyball teams. there are NCAA volleyball league. and thus is probably played by most high schools as well. but yet, we hardly see any volleyball coverage on TV either. not completely none, but rare.

in terms of tv popularity, badminton is still up against volleyball, which already have a head start.

volleyball is somewhat similar to badminton in nature, at least from the viewer's point of view, played indoor, has a net, something get hit from side to side. perhaps there is a pattern here?

another sport is racquet ball. i don't see much TV coverage on that either.

i am starting to see a pattern here.