U.S. men fall 3-0 to France, but show growing World Team Championships promise

The scoreline said 3-0. The first rubber said something more complicated: the U.S. men were close enough to France to make the tie feel live before the Europeans’ depth took over.

Kanak Jha gave the Americans their best opening against Flavien Coton, pushing the 18-year-old Frenchman to four games and building the biggest lead of the match. Jha had a real chance to drag the opener into a deciding fifth before Coton’s pace and precision shut the door. That was the stretch that mattered most for Team USA, because it showed the U.S. can still get a foothold against a nation carrying top-30 talent through the lineup, even if the foothold is not yet strong enough to flip the result.

France did what strong teams do after surviving an early scare. Félix Lebrun and Simon Gauzy swept Jishan Liang and Nandan Naresh, ending the tie without needing a deciding rubber. Lebrun came in ranked No. 4 in the world, Gauzy No. 19, Coton No. 23 and Jha No. 29 in the latest rankings released May 4. That kind of spread explains why France entered the knockout phase as the reigning European Team Champions and why the Americans were always facing a steep climb.

Still, the match gave USA Table Tennis something more useful than a moral victory. Jha showed he could trade with a world-class opponent and keep the pressure on deep into the opener. Liang and Naresh, meanwhile, got a firsthand look at the speed, placement and discipline that separate elite team play from the next tier. Those are hard lessons, but for a developing program they matter, especially when they come against a side that had already beaten Japan 3-2 and had Coton saving four match points in that comeback over Shunsuke Togami.

The setting added weight to the result. The 2026 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals in London marked the centenary edition, 100 years after the first World Championships were staged there in 1926. The event brought 64 men’s teams and 64 women’s teams across 13 days at Copper Box Arena and OVO Arena Wembley, with Team USA’s women also competing in the same city. The U.S. men’s run ended in the second stage after beating India 3-1, but against France the bigger picture was clear: the gap is still real, yet Jha’s opening rubber showed it is no longer immovable.