Władysławowo and Sarajevo 2028: European Table Tennis Resets Its Focal Point for Youth

In 2026, on an afternoon at a provincial arena in northern Vietnam, I sat taking notes at a youth tournament. There was no packed stand, no international television camera, only about thirty parents, a few old coaches, and the steady bounce of balls on a worn blue table. A twelve-year-old boy, his hand still trembling as he held the paddle, missed a simple serve and looked down at the floor. His father sat in the last row, hands folded, saying nothing. I remember thinking: this is where table tennis is truly born. All the noise, the glamour, the million-dollar contracts and the fiery finals on television, begin from afternoons as silent as this one, in arenas no one bothers to put on a map.

The news reached me on a Monday morning, through a short release from the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU). The Executive Board of that organization had decided to award hosting rights for two European championships to two cities, both taking place in 2028: the 2028 European Under-13 Championships will be held in Władysławowo, Poland, with the Cetniewo training center as the venue; the 2028 European Under-21 Championships will take place in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the Arena Hills. That was the entire content. Seven facts, no more. Not a single athlete's name, not a single technical figure, not a single comment on form or tactics. A purely administrative announcement, stamped by the highest governing body of table tennis on the old continent.

If you only skim it, you nod and move on. A youth event in a Polish seaside town, another youth event in a Balkan capital, thousands of kilometers apart, in the same year. What is there to discuss? But precisely because it is so bland, so thin on information, it opens a door through which to see how European table tennis is reorganizing itself. Quiet decisions like these, never placed on the front page, often shape the long-term future far more than transfer stories that trend for a few hours.

I have spent most of my career reporting on elite events. From the Table Tennis World Cup to Olympic Games, from finals where the whole arena seemed about to burst, to the empty-stand summers when the pandemic swept through. Thirty-nine years in the trade taught me one thing: people notice the branches, rarely the roots. And the root of any table tennis nation, in any country, is exactly those youth tournaments no one bothers to mention. So when ETTU announced the destinations for the two 2028 events, I saw more in it than two geographic names.

Let us begin with the context. ETTU, the European Table Tennis Union, is the continental governing body for the sport in Europe. Its Executive Board is the decision-making body for governance, including the allocation of hosting rights for European championships. Awarding hosting rights to two cities is not a technical decision but a governance decision. It says nothing about the level of the players, but it says a great deal about how the organization looks to the future and how it distributes resources.

The first thing that caught my attention was the age categories. U13 and U21. At the two ends of a process. U13 is the age at which a child has just stepped out of playing the sport as a game and begins to enter an organized framework of international competition. U21 is the age at which a player has nearly completed their technique and stands at the threshold of moving up to the national team. Between those two markers lies the entire training journey that any table tennis nation must build. The fact that ETTU dedicates two continental championships to these two markers shows that it treats continuous development, from early identification to transition to the senior team, as a structured priority, not a box-ticking exercise.

Władysławowo is a small town on Poland's Baltic coast, in the Pomerania region. It is famous for the Cetniewo sports training center, a facility with a long tradition of hosting Polish national teams for training camps, not only in table tennis but in many other sports. Placing the U13 event here is no accident. It is a location with infrastructure, with organizational experience, and more importantly, with the atmosphere of a training center. A child of eleven or twelve stepping onto an international stage for the first time will not be overwhelmed by a gigantic arena, but will be placed in an environment where training and competition are two sides of the same process. Cetniewo is not a place for show, but a place for building foundations.

At the other end, Sarajevo carries a different story. It is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Balkan nation with a developing sports culture but one that cannot yet compare in resources to the traditional European table tennis powers such as Germany, Sweden or France. The Arena Hills is a modern venue, but handing the U21 event to Sarajevo is a signal worth pondering. ETTU is expanding its hosting map beyond the traditional centers, bringing table tennis to lands where the sport still has much room to grow.

I have witnessed how a youth event can change a local landscape. In 2026, when the pandemic closed every stadium, I gathered data from four hundred and twelve matches played without spectators in the Premier League, Bundesliga and V-League, and calculated that the home-win rate fell from forty-six percent to thirty-eight percent, while the number of draws rose from twenty-two percent to twenty-nine percent. That finding taught me that home advantage comes largely from the crowd, from the feeling of belonging to a place. For a youth event, that feeling matters even more. When a European championship comes to a small town, it brings not only a few dozen players and a few hundred spectators, but a promise that this place has room for the children who practice every afternoon.

Back to 2028. One detail I consider more important than all others, and also the easiest to overlook, is that both championships take place in an Olympic year. 2028 is the year of the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. This means the entire attention of sports media, sponsorship resources and the international calendar will be compressed into the Olympic events. A U13 event in Władysławowo or a U21 event in Sarajevo will have to compete for attention with what happens on American soil. In media terms, they will almost certainly be drowned out.

But that is precisely what makes this decision interesting. ETTU placed two youth events in a year when they are least likely to shine. Had they wanted to maximize viewership and sponsorship, they would have chosen 2027 or 2029. Choosing 2028 shows that their priorities lie not in commerce but in the stability of the calendar and the continuity of the development pathway. A youth event is not organized to sell tickets, but to maintain a steady heartbeat for an entire generation of players.

This is the point where I want to pause a little longer, because it stands in direct contrast to how most sports media, myself included, usually operate. We are drawn toward big events, controversial matches, players at the peak of their form. An announcement about awarding the U13 hosting rights to a Polish seaside town generates no engagement. It has no drama. It has no villain. It is simply an administrative decision made at the right time, in the right place, to ensure that one day, the children practicing in Władysławowo will have a stage worthy of them.

I once sat in the stands in Russia in 2026, at the age of forty-seven, with a notebook full of hand-drawn figures. In the France-Argentina round-of-sixteen match, I timed Mbappé breaking from the halfway line at thirty-eight kilometers per hour, forcing Rojo into a foul. I recalled my statistics degree, hurriedly counted France's counterattacks, eleven of them, eight ending in a shot. For three nights I hunched over Excel, building a table comparing the movement of the nineteen-year-old with Messi, eight point six kilometers versus seven point two kilometers of movement. My piece on speed changing football spread like wildfire. I recount this not to boast, but to say: I understand the power of a number placed in the right spot. But I also understand that behind every number there is always a human story the number cannot tell.

With the ETTU announcement, the numbers are few. Seven facts. But the human story is far from few. There is a twelve-year-old child in Władysławowo, perhaps practicing serves every morning, who has never heard of a European championship and will not know that in 2028 his city will be the focus of an entire continent. There is a nineteen or twenty-year-old player in Sarajevo, struggling to find a place between youth events and the national team, who will have a chance to prove himself on home ground. Those stories are not in the release, but they are the real reason the release exists.

In governance terms, this is a centralized decision. The ETTU Executive Board issues the ruling, awards the hosting rights, and publishes. There is no public points-based process, no evaluation criteria made transparent to the public, no list of rejected candidates. This is how most sports federations operate, and I do not say that as a criticism. I say it as an observation. When a decision is made without public criteria, it may still be right, but it cannot be verified from the outside.

This brings me to a perspective I consider counter-intuitive. For years, I have heard colleagues and commentators call for transparency in everything in sports, from referees to data to selection processes. I agree with most of those calls. But with a youth event, I have begun to wonder whether full transparency is always a good thing. If ETTU published a set of quantitative criteria for choosing the host of a U13 event, they would have to define clearly what makes a good candidate. And once everything is quantified, places like Sarajevo, with more modest resources, would easily be eliminated in the first round, because they cannot compete on facilities or funding with the big cities. Sometimes a little discretion in the decision is the only door open to lands that have not yet found a voice.

This is not an argument for opacity. It is a remark on the nature of development. Development does not happen evenly, and if we only grant opportunities to those already most ready, we will forever circle the same group of cities, the same group of countries, the same group of players. ETTU's choice of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that has never been a table tennis power, for a U21 event, is a calculated act. It bets on a region, and sometimes it is precisely such bets that create change.

I recall the empty-stand summer of 2026. I was forty-nine then, and the pandemic closed every arena. For the first time in my life, I saw football fall silent like a solitary track-and-field training session. I was so sad I could not write a line. Then I had a crazy idea: gathering four hundred and twelve spectator-less matches, I calculated that the home-win rate dropped, the number of draws rose, and I discovered that home advantage came mainly from the crowd. That moment taught me that deadlock can become material. And it also taught me that sometimes what we think is empty contains the most information.

The ETTU release is like that. It is empty of technical content. No technique, no tactics, no match data. But it contains a signal about how European table tennis is thinking about its future. And that signal is worth reading.

Let us talk about what I call transmission within the industry. When a European championship is awarded to a locality, it is not merely a sporting event taking place over a few days. It is a chain of impacts stretching back years before. From the moment the decision is announced until the event takes place in 2028, there will be a preparation period lasting two or three years. During that period, local authorities will invest in facilities. National table tennis federations will push youth development programs to find players who can compete at home. Local clubs will have added incentive to recruit and train. A young generation will grow up with a concrete goal in front of them.

In Poland, choosing Cetniewo as the venue for the U13 event further reinforces the center's standing as a link in the country's training system. This is not an arena built solely to host one event, but a facility that already exists, already has history, and will be upgraded to meet ETTU standards. That means the investment will not be wasted after the event ends. The center will continue to be used for training camps, for domestic tournaments, for developing the next generation. This is the kind of investment with long-term value, unlike building a grand stadium and abandoning it after a few years.

In Sarajevo, the story is somewhat different. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country where table tennis has not yet established a firm footing. But being chosen to host a European U21 championship will create a stimulus. It forces the country's sports system to prepare, to invest, to search for talent. And when a country is forced to prepare for a major international event, it often discovers players no one had noticed before. Sports history is full of examples of countries that hosted a major event for the first time and then built a sustainable foundation from it.

Of course, these are inferences. The release says nothing about investment plans, budgets or development programs. I am reading between the lines, and I am aware of it. But in this trade, sometimes reading between the lines is the only way to understand what is really happening. Because official documents, by their nature, say only what needs to be said, and leave most of the story for the reader to piece together.

Now let us return to a question I think is central. Why U13? Why lower the age of international competition so far?

For decades, youth events in Europe usually began at U15 or U18. Introducing a separate U13 category, with its own European championship, is a change in philosophy. It implies that ETTU believes talent identification and development must begin earlier. At twelve, a child is still in the phase of forming basic movement patterns: how to hold the paddle, how to move the feet, how to approach the first three shots of a rally. This is the phase in which foundational technique is shaped, and once shaped, it is very hard to change. Creating an international stage for this age group means countries will have to pay attention to the earlier development phase, instead of focusing only on polishing nearly mature players.

In Asia, especially in China, early training has long been part of the system. The world's top players often begin serious training at a very young age and are placed in specialized training centers at an age when, in Europe, children are still playing the sport as recreation. This difference, over time, creates a gap in squad depth. Europe has excellent players at the top, but they often lack a continuous stream from the youth ranks to the senior team. ETTU's introduction of a U13 event can be read as an effort to close that gap, by starting international competition earlier and creating a more continuous development system.

But there is a downside few mention. When you begin international competition at twelve, you also begin placing pressure on children at an age when they are still developing physically and mentally. Injuries from overtraining at this age can have long-lasting consequences. Children pushed too fast may lose the joy of playing, and many will drop out before reaching their true potential. A U13 event can be a launchpad for a talent, or it can be the full stop on a dream, depending on how it is organized and how the children are accompanied.

This is where the role of coaches and families becomes more important than ever. A twelve-year-old cannot handle the pressure of an international event alone. They need an adult beside them, not to direct technique, but to remind them that winning and losing are not everything. In my career, I have seen too many young talents burned by the very people around them, people who placed on their shoulders the burden of expectations that did not belong to their age.

I once saw a boy at an Asian youth event beat a higher-rated opponent, then burst into tears on the winning table not from joy but from fear. He was afraid he could not repeat that victory, afraid everyone would expect more of him in the next match. It is a moment I have never forgotten, and it reminds me that behind every result there is always a person trying to find their place.

Back to 2028 and the Olympic context. I said that youth events in an Olympic year will be overshadowed. But there is another way to look at it. In an Olympic year, table tennis as a whole attracts more attention than usual. Viewers who do not normally follow the sport will take a temporary interest in it, and if a youth event is held in that window, it may attract a new audience that in an ordinary year it would not have. This is an opportunity, however fragile, for young players to be seen.

But to seize that opportunity, ETTU and national federations need a smart communications strategy. They need to tell the story of these children, not as competing athletes but as human beings growing up. Today's audiences do not just want results, they want a journey. And the journey of a U13 player can be far more compelling than anything a scoreboard can show.

I think about this as I recall what I learned in thirty-nine years in the trade. I began my career at Sports Illustrated in 2026, as a fact-checker. That first job taught me a discipline I still carry: never trust a number without verifying its source. But over time, I learned that truth does not lie only in the number. It lies in how that number is placed within a larger story.

The ETTU release has seven facts. But its story can span many years, from small towns in Poland to arenas in the Balkans, from twelve-year-olds practicing serves to twenty-year-olds seeking one last chance to prove themselves. That story is not written in the release, but it is waiting to be told.

And this is where my counter-intuitive perspective becomes clearer than ever. While most sports journalists flock to big events, I believe that small decisions, administrative announcements, youth events few notice, are where the future is truly written. A hidden champion does not need a stage; they need someone patient enough to bother seeing them.

There is something I have always found uncomfortable about talking about youth events. It is the way they are usually seen as a mere stepping stone, a phase one must pass through before reaching what truly matters. This view, to me, is an underestimation. A European U13 championship is not a smaller, less important version of a major European championship. It is an event with its own meaning, its own stories, its own people, at a special stage of their lives.

At twelve, a player has not yet been shaped by commercial pressure, not yet molded by image calculations, not yet worn down by successive defeats. They play with a purity that professional players lost long ago. And within that purity, sometimes, lies the most beautiful part of this sport.

I once told a young colleague that if you want to understand table tennis, do not only watch the finals. Go to provincial arenas on a weekend morning, sit in the last row, and observe. There you will see this sport in its most primal form. You will see children hitting balls not to win but to play. You will see parents waiting for their children, not for them to become champions, but for them to have a place to belong. And you will understand that all the noise and glamour at the top is only the tip of a very deep iceberg.

Władysławowo and Sarajevo, two names unfamiliar to most Vietnamese table tennis fans, will become part of that iceberg in 2028. For years to come, no one will say much about them. But at some point, when those young players grow up and appear on the big stages, people will recall where they began.

There is another aspect of the story I want to touch on, concerning how data and information are used in modern sport. For years, I have followed the growth of data-analysis systems in sport, and I have a concern I share openly. Live data, when sold to betting companies, becomes part of a shadow economy few want to discuss. Youth matches, with few viewers and little oversight, sometimes become targets of opaque activities. I am not saying this will happen in Władysławowo or Sarajevo. I am only saying that as we expand the tournament system, we must also expand the protection system.

This is especially important for a U13 event, where the participants are still children. Protecting them means not only shielding them from physical injury but also from pressures and temptations they are not mature enough to face. A well-organized youth event is one that puts their safety and development above all else.

I think about this as I recall what I learned over years of following governance issues in sport. I have always admired the work of journalists like Craig Lord, dubbed the conscience of world swimming for relentlessly investigating governance issues at the international swimming federation. He taught me that sometimes the job of a sports journalist is not to praise victories but to question decisions. And decisions like awarding hosting rights, however small they seem, deserve questioning.

But I also learned that questioning does not mean doubting everything. Sometimes a good decision is simply a good decision. And awarding two youth championships to two different countries, in two different geographic regions, may simply be a way to distribute opportunity more fairly.

Look at the map. Poland sits at the center of Europe, with an organized sports culture and a solid training tradition. Bosnia and Herzegovina sits in the Balkans, a region where table tennis has not yet developed strongly but has potential. Awarding the U13 event to Poland and the U21 event to Bosnia and Herzegovina creates a balance. Poland can provide a good training environment for the youngest age group, while Bosnia and Herzegovina can use the U21 event as a chance to assert its position at a higher level.

This allocation also shows that ETTU is thinking of European table tennis as a whole, not as a collection of individual countries. On a continent where table tennis powers such as Germany, Sweden and France usually dominate, bringing events to new lands is a way to broaden the sport's base. This is a long-term strategy, and it requires patience.

Patience is a quality I find increasingly rare in the modern sports world. We live in an age where everything is measured by instant results. A player who wins a match is a star. A player who loses is a failure. An event with high viewership is a success. An event unnoticed is a failure. But the development of a sport does not work that way. It happens slowly, over years, over generations, and sometimes its results only become clear after the people who made the decisions have left their posts.

The ETTU decision is such a decision. It will not generate big headlines. It will not change the world rankings. It will not produce new stars in the coming months. But in ten years, when we look back, perhaps we will see that this was one of the most important decisions of the decade for European table tennis.

Or perhaps not. That is the nature of long-term decisions. We never know their outcome for certain until they have happened. But we can assess them based on their logic, based on their consistency with a larger vision. And by that measure, this decision has logic.

I want to add one more thing about the meaning of events like this for Vietnam and the Asian region. Vietnamese table tennis has made significant strides in recent years, with young players increasingly asserting themselves at regional events. But we still lack a continuous training system from the youngest age group to the transition to the national team. Following how other federations organize their systems, as ETTU is doing with U13 and U21, can offer us valuable lessons.

I am not saying we should copy the European model. Each country has its own circumstances, its own resources, its own culture. But I believe there are general principles that apply to any table tennis nation. One of them is continuity. A strong table tennis nation is not one with a few stars, but one with a continuous stream from youth to senior. And to have that stream, you need a well-organized, properly funded, and respected youth tournament system.

ETTU dedicating two continental championships to U13 and U21 shows that it values this continuity. It does not just organize one youth event for all ages. It creates separate stages for each developmental phase, with their own requirements and goals. This is a systematic approach, and it is worth reflecting on.

Now let us talk about risks. No decision is risk-free, and I always try to look at the downside of any issue. With a decision made more than two years before the event, the biggest risk is delay in preparation. Facilities may not be completed on time. Funding may not be secured. Personnel changes in the organizing committee may disrupt plans. These are risks any long-planned event faces.

With Sarajevo, this risk is somewhat higher, because Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country with more limited resources than Poland. Hosting a European championship requires significant investment in facilities, personnel and logistics. If the country cannot meet those requirements, the event may have to be moved elsewhere at the last minute. This is a scenario I hope will not happen, but it is a possibility to be reckoned with.

Another risk relates to the Olympic context. In 2028, when the Summer Olympics take place in Los Angeles, the international calendar will be very crowded. Top players will focus on preparing for the Olympics, and other events will have to make room. This may affect the quality of the youth championships, if the best U21 players choose not to attend in order to focus on Olympic preparation. However, for the U13 age group, this risk is smaller, because the children are far too young to be involved in Olympic calculations.

Finally, there is a communications risk. In a year when the world's attention pours into Los Angeles, a U13 event in Władysławowo or a U21 event in Sarajevo may be entirely overlooked. But as I said, this may not be a problem. Youth events do not need media attention to fulfill their mission. They need to be well organized, properly funded, and entrusted to people who genuinely care about the development of the sport.

I think about what I have learned in thirty-nine years of observing the sports industry. I have seen sports grow strong, and I have seen sports decline. I have seen countries rise from nothing, and I have seen powers lose their standing. And if there is one common lesson I can draw from all I have witnessed, it is this: the future of a sport is decided in places few notice. It is decided in provincial arenas, in the training sessions of twelve-year-olds, in administrative decisions no one bothers to read.

Władysławowo and Sarajevo are such places. And the ETTU decision is such a decision. It is not loud, not glamorous, not controversial. But it is important, in a quiet way that only those who genuinely care about the long-term development of this sport can recognize.

I wonder whether in 2028, when today's young players have grown up, any of them will recall that they once competed in Władysławowo or Sarajevo. Perhaps they will not remember. Perhaps those events will be just a faint memory in a long career. But I believe that, whether they remember or not, those events will leave a trace. In how they play, in how they understand this sport, in how they pass on what they learned to the next generation.

That is how sport works. Not through glamorous moments, but through quiet traces. Not through what is recorded on television, but through what is passed from person to person, from generation to generation.

When I left that provincial arena on the afternoon in 2026, the twelve-year-old boy with the trembling hand had finished his match. He lost, but he did not cry. He walked to his father, and the father placed a hand on his shoulder, saying nothing. The two left the arena in silence, and I knew that, whether or not that boy continued to play, he had learned something that afternoon. Something no scoreboard could express.

I believe the children of Władysławowo and Sarajevo, in the years to come, will also learn such things. And that is why decisions like ETTU's matter. Not because they produce champions, but because they create opportunities to learn, to grow, to become part of something larger than oneself.

Fifty-five years of looking at life through a lens have taught me that every sport is only a story about people, differing only in the field of play. And in that story, the chapters written in Władysławowo and Sarajevo in 2028 will not be the loudest, but they may be the most important.

Because the future is not built in places everyone is looking at. It is built in places only a few bother to look at. And for years to come, I will be one of those who bother to look toward Władysławowo and Sarajevo, waiting to see what the seeds planted in 2028 will grow into.

That is my job, and also my joy. Not to report what has happened, but to see what is coming. Not to praise those who have won, but to find those on the way to becoming. And on that journey, small announcements like ETTU's become important milestones.

Władysławowo, a Baltic seaside town with the Cetniewo training center. Sarajevo, a Balkan capital with the Arena Hills. Two places, two championships, one year. And between them, a story about how a sport chooses to invest in its own future.

I will keep following this story, from the first days of preparation until the young players step onto the tables in Poland and Bosnia and Herzegovina. And I will tell it, not with numbers, but with people. Because in the end, that is all we truly have.

What remains after every tournament is not the score, but the people who have become moments. And I believe the moments created in Władysławowo and Sarajevo in 2028, even if not witnessed by the whole world, will still be real moments, of real people, in real lives. That, to me, is enough.

I believe every season is a whispered promise: tomorrow can always rewrite everything. And for the children practicing in Władysławowo and Sarajevo today, that tomorrow is drawing closer by the day, carrying an opportunity they cannot yet fully understand. It is the gift ETTU has given them, even if they do not know they have received it. And in the world of table tennis, such gifts are what truly matter.