January 15 – Milan will be the host city for the FIFA eClub World Cup 2020 finals that will be played February 7-9, the first time the finals have been held in Italy.
From a start list of 190 teams, 24 have qualified for the finals, making their way through five rounds of online qualification.
Roma, Basel, Man City, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Olympique Lyonais lead the club branded qualifiers. Denmark’s Brondby won the first two editions while King eSports won in 2019 but haven’t made it to the 2019 finals.
Three Italian teams have made the finals – Mkers, AS Roma and Team QLASH.
Just six of the 24 qualified teams play under football club banners – all are professional eSports teams. The other finalists include a number of the biggest eSports team names in the business. They will be competing for $100,000 in prize money.
FIFA plays its eClub World Cup in dual format with each match-up including 1v1 and 2v2 contests. The finals will see the current world ranking leaders in play on Xbox and PlayStation – Donovan ‘Tekkz’ Hunt (Fnatic) and Diego ‘Crazy’ Campagnani (Team QLASH) – as well as 2017 World Champion Spencer ‘Gorilla’ Ealing (NEO).
Of the 24 finalists, eight have appeared in the finals before with Manchester City set to equal Brondby’s record three appearances. The Danes didn’t qualify for the 2020 finals.
Teams that have made the finals before are: Manchester City eSports (2017, 2019, 2020), FaZe Clan (2019, 2020), Olympique Lyonnais (2017, 2020), AS Roma (2017, 2020), Mkers (2018, 2020), Hashtag United (2018, 2020), FC Basel 1893 eSports (2018, 2020), Blue United eFC (2018, 2020).
FIFA plays its eClub World Cup in dual format with each match-up including 1v1 and 2v2 contests.
“We are proud that over 190 teams from all over the world took part in this season’s qualification and we are beyond excited to find the world’s best team out of the top-class field of participating teams. The introduction of team-based 2v2 matches showed a new level of excitement and competitiveness at last year’s event and will undoubtedly spark huge emotions at this year’s tournament as well,” said Adrian Rölli, Head of eFootball at FIFA.
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