The Montreal Impact’s first eSports player aspires to biggest honours
BOSTON, Massachussets – The Montreal Impact and its eSports player, Lyes Ould-Ramoul, better known by his online pseudonym, LyesMTL, will be in the Bostonian area this weekend. If the first team will face the New England Revolution at Gillette Stadium on Friday at 7:30pm (TVA Sports, TSN, 98,5fm, TSN Radio 690), LyesMTL, on his end, will participate in the inaugural edition of the eMLS Cup.
This eSports tournament is organized by MLS and will be played on FIFA18 on PlayStation 4 at PAX East, a major video game convention. LyesMTL will face every player from the Eastern Conference on Thursday and Friday during the qualifying stage, the end goal being to qualify for the knockout stage on Saturday and Sunday. The eMLS Cup champion will earn his spot in the EA Sports FIFA 18 Ultimate Club Global Series Playoffs event, which is one of the entryways for the 2018 FIFA eWorld Cup.
“I’ve been waiting for this since the beginning,” said LyesMTL. “I’ve trained very hard for this type of tournament. I feel ready. I’ve played quite a few games with my training partners and I did video sessions, to see what aspects of my game needed improvement. My goal is to participate in the World Cup and win the eMLS Cup.”
Out of the 19 clubs participating in the 2018 eMLS Cup, nine are in the Eastern Conference and will face LyesMTL: Chicago Fire and Edhem Jukovic, Columbus Crew SC and Graham Ellix, New England Revolution and John Oliveira, New York City FC and Christopher Holly, New York Red Bulls and Mike LaBelle, Orlando City SC and Abraham Valbuena, Philadelphia Union and Corman Dooley, and finally, Toronto FC and Phil Balke.
On Thursday and Friday, LyesMTL will play two qualifying games against every other player in the Eastern Conference. The first eight players in each conference will proceed to the knockout stage, on Saturday and Sunday, which will begin with the conference quarterfinals. Every knockout stage game will be broadcast live on MLS’ Twitch account (twitch.com/emls).
For the first time this year, the international tournaments organised by EA Sports and FIFA will be paired to create a major tournament, the FIFA eWorld Cup. 32 eSports players will battle to be crowned the best FIFA 18 player on the planet this summer in a city that has yet to be announced. Last year, the FIFA Interactive World Cup champion and the winner of the EA Sports Ultimate Team Championship Series won prizes of $200,000 USD and $160,000 USD, respectively.
