Fan Zhendong went to Germany to play basketball and caused controversy: Why do career choices always get morally kidnapped?

On June 1st, Fan Zhendong said lightly on the social platform that he wanted to play in Germany. He thought it was a normal "transfer" for professional players, but who would have expected that the public opinion field would be in full swing four days later. Those who once used to browse accounts of "Brother Dong is so handsome" and "always support you" in the comment area suddenly changed their side faces together - "I don't want to put the glory of the national team, and go to work for foreigners?" "I forget my roots after winning the championship. What's not a rebellion?" What's even more outrageous is that someone found out the photos of him slapped with foreign players in his early years, and took it out of context and said, "I have long had a second intention."

To be honest, I feel very moved when I see these remarks. In the sports circle, athlete mobility is the norm. When Wu Lei went to Espanyol to play football, the fans shouted "the hope of the whole village"; when Zhou Qi was struggling in the NBA Development League, everyone said, "Only by going out can you become stronger." Why did the logic change when I got to table tennis? As our "national football", the fans' feelings are deeper, but is it a bit too harsh to forcefully tie career choices with "loyalty"?

Outsiders see Fan Zhendong as a Grand Slam winner standing at the top of the pyramid, but who knows how heavy this "crown" is? Let’s talk about the National Games last year. He won the ball. Some people said, “It’s just the king of civil war, but foreign players are still hit when they come”; they lost a group match, and the hot searches said, “Fan Zhendong’s condition collapses, and the Paris Olympics are in lingering.” What's even more suffocating is the off-site - once he went to the mall to buy a cup of milk tea, and was chased by more than 20 cameras, and finally he could only slip away from the safe passage.

His words "Is it wrong to lose, Is it right to win" sounded very heartbroken. Athletes are also humans, not machines for human scoring. I remember a detail: When he was training in China, he was often stuffed with various "support gifts" at the door of the dormitory, and some fans even secretly installed cameras. Anyone can't breathe if this kind of "love" is it? In Germany, he can eat quietly in a small restaurant wearing a sweatshirt and not always beware of the flash. This attractiveness of "normal life" may be more precious than a high salary.

Salbrücken Club is the right bet this time. Half a month before the official announcement, the person in charge, Berg, told his friend: "We want to change the history of European table tennis." This is not an exaggeration - as soon as the news came out, the sales of official jerseys collapsed directly. The small stadium where 3,000 people could have been in the small stadium, and tens of thousands of emails to apply for ticket purchases were piled up. Now that the clubs are full of Europe, they are looking for venues that can accommodate tens of thousands of people, they are probably happy around them.

For Fan Zhendong, this is even more of a "win-win" deal. The German League has a high intensity of confrontation, and the coaching team will use sports science to analyze every serving angle. This systematic training is too critical for him to break through the technical bottleneck. Moreover, European players have diverse styles of playing, including violent arcs with horizontal boards and delicate controls with straight boards. Fighting with them is like "expanding" their own tactical library. Maybe he can return to the national team next year and he can surprise his opponent with new tricks.

The most ridiculous thing is the argument of "leaking secrets". Where is there any "absolute secret" in the sports circle now? You see NBA teams studying tactical videos, and the Premier League coaching team shared data analysis. The true core competitiveness is the athlete's on-site response and muscle memory day after day. Besides, Fan Zhendong will have video conferences with the national team coaching team every week to synchronize his training experience. This is not a "betrayal", it is clearly a "public study abroad"!

In fact, to put it bluntly, behind the doubts is some people's excessive anxiety about the "national ball". But don’t forget that when Liu Guoliang coached the American team, we said this was “Table Tennis Diplomacy”; now Fan Zhendong goes to Germany, isn’t it another cultural output? When European audiences cheered for the Chinese players’ backhand twist, isn’t it more convincing than ten press conferences?

Some people say that athletes should "a team for life" and devote their youth to the national team; some people think that career choice is personal freedom, as long as they do not violate the law and morality, others have no right to point fingers. But I want to say that true love is not to trap the idol in the cage of "patriotism", but to believe that no matter where he is, he can exude the spirit of the Chinese. Fan Zhendong's "exit" may be a mirror, which not only reflects the ecology of the sports circle, but also the tolerance of a society towards "choice". After all, when we can calmly view athletes' "go" and "stay", it is the beginning of true confidence in Chinese sports.