Will the next European Star come from France? (Update)

A year ago I analyzed the prospects of France of having the next European star in the men’s singles. As one year has passed, I will take a look at the developments of the players from the original post.

Strength Developments

Viktor Axelsen and Anders Antonsen

Again I will compare the strengths for the French players with the strengths of Viktor Axelsen and Anders Antonsen. As in the previous post, the strengths will be calculated at every start of a calendar month and then plotted against the age of the player at the time. Of course it is difficult to compare strengths from different points in time. As the strengths are normalized to the average strength of a top-10 player, I hope the values will be comparable.

I will use a smaller line width for the data that was already present in the previous post, i.e. data that is more than one year old.

We can see that Axelsen had a very good run recently, his most recent strength value in the monthly ranking peaked at a value of over 27. Antonsen has stagnated at a high level of around 20.

Toma Junior Popov

One can see that he had a weak first half of the past year but then had a better second half. He won the Orleans Masters. All together this allowed him to return to his former level. However he could not close the gap towards the Danish players.

Arnaud Merkle

Just like Toma Junior Popov, Merkle also had his ups and downs and could not catch up to the Danes. However he had a good first half of the past year and a not so good lest half year.

Christo Popov

Christo Popov is still close to the two Danes.

Yanis Gaudin, Sacha Leveque, Enogat Roy

All three are now around 19 years of age. During the last year their strength values have stagneted. So they will probably not play a big role in top-level international badminton in the future.

Alex Lanier

The final player in this line-up. Born in January 2005, he has not been in any final of a European Junior Championships. In 2020 he reached the round of last 16. But he is still eligible for future editions of the tournament.

Lanier won the Italian International and the Estonien International. His strength value improved and is still between Axelsen and Antonsen, though now he is much closer to Antonsen than to Axelsen.

Comparison

Finally a plot that compares all four individually discussed players to the Danes:

I can only repeat the caption to this plot from one year ago: This shows the huge potential by Christo Popov and Alex Lanier, being at comparable strengths to the two Danes.

And, as in the original post, the same plot, this time not ordered by age of the player, but by the date.

The curves for the French players start more to the right as they are younger. There are no common peaks or dips visible, so it is safe to assume that strengths from different dates are comparable.

European Rankings

In the original post we also took a look at the European and the World rankings when only taking players born in 2002 or later into account. The European rankings for today, thus exactly one year later, are as follows:

Rank	Strength	Matches	Born	Name
1	15.62	49	2002	Christo Popov
2	13.33	118	2002	Magnus Johannesen
3	12.38	93	2005	Alex Lanier
4	10.90	50	2002	Gustav Bjorkler
5	10.58	77	2003	Mads Juel Møller
6	10.51	81	2003	Christopher Vittoriani
7	10.39	62	2003	Victor Ørding Kauffmann
8	10.30	68	2002	Joakim Oldorff
9	10.11	66	2002	Yanis Gaudin
10	10.08	44	2003	Gregoire Deschamp
11	9.96	83	2002	Matthias Kicklitz
12	9.58	47	2003	Cholan Kayan
13	9.51	13	2003	Ethan Rose
14	9.49	61	2003	Amaury Lievre
15	9.20	12	2004	Dicky Dwi Pangestu

The gap between Popov and the second ranked player, Magnus Johannesen from Denmark, has closed down a bit, as Johannessen could improve his strength value by more than one unit. Second, Alex Lanier rose from rank 4 to rank 3 and is still the only player in the top 14 not born in the years 2002 or 2003, actually born in 2005, making him ranked higher than all other Europeans two or threes older than him, except the aforementioned Christo Popov and Magnus Johannesen.

World Rankings

The World rankings for today are as follows:

Rank	Strength	Matches	Born	Name
1	15.62	49	2002	Christo Popov
2	14.08	12	2004	Shun Saito
3	14.04	20	2003	Yohanes Saut Marcelino
4	13.91	51	2002	Priyanshu Rajawat
5	13.85	31	2002	Liao Jhuo-Fu
6	13.80	65	2002	Meiraba Meiraba Luwang
7	13.37	19	2004	Jason Gunawan
8	13.33	118	2002	Magnus Johannesen
9	13.06	58	2004	Justin Hoh Shou Wei
10	12.39	23	2002	Ravi
11	12.38	93	2005	Alex Lanier
12	12.35	49	2002	Jacky Jing Hong Kok
13	12.34	19	2003	Rithvik Sanjeevi Satish Kumar
14	12.30	58	2005	Alwi Farhan
15	12.07	13	2003	Koshiro Moriguchi
16	11.86	18	2002	Sulistio Tegar
17	11.63	14	2003	Viren Nettasinghe
18	11.60	13	2004	Koya Iwano
19	11.53	11	2002	Ming Hong Lim
20	11.51	15	2004	Panitchaphon Teeraratsakul

First there is a lot of fluctuations on this list. Some players from last year’s list have failed to play enough matches to be included. Christo Popov is still the leader. Alex Lanier rose to rank 11. But again it is difficult to compare him to other players in his age group, as there have not been many junior tournaments in Asia during the last months. More than one year ago, but still not as many as usual. Note that Chinese and Korean players are completely absent from this list for example. A new entry on this list is Shun Saito from Japan, who I have never heard of. But given his age, he is definitely a player to keep an eye on.

Conclusion

One year after my initial analysis the French players in general have not improved as much as one might have wished. Nevertheless Christo Popov and Alex Lanier are players I would expect to reach world-class levels soon.

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