The United States and Canada Reveal Their National Overwatch Team
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These past several days, LA Convention Center has been hosting The Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3, the biggest gaming event in the world. Over the last couple of years, this event revealed some of the biggest news in eSports industry. This year was no different as many video game developers revealed plans for new games and improvements of existing games.
However, one thing stood out last night, as the United States and Canada became the first countries to reveal their National Overwatch Teams that will be competing at the Overwatch World Cup that will be organized by Blizzard later this year. Last year’s World Cup featured a lot of problems and selection of players was just one of them. Because of that, Blizzard introduced national committees who had the job of selecting players for their national team.
US National Overwatch Team
When it comes to the United States, that committee featured Steven ‘ster’ Serge who is one of the most popular streamers in the US, Kyle ‘kyky’ Souder who is currently the main coach in Team EnVyUs and Jason Kaplan, a caster. According to their statements, finding the right player was not an easy job, and they really believe that they have done a good job by selecting players for the US national team.
That team will feature Russell ‘FCTFCTN’ Campbell who currently plays as a tank player for FaZe Clan. Shane ‘Rawkus’ Flaherty will join as a support player Russell ‘FCTFCTN’ Campbell in the US national. Cloud9’s support player, Adam ‘Adam’ Eckel will also be joining the national team of his country.
Besides them, Matt ‘coolmatt69’ Iorio, former Fnatic flex player, will also be joining the team together with Jay ‘sinatraa’ Won, DPS player in Selfless, and Jake Lyon who also plays as a DPS player in LG Evil. These players have not put out any statement about this yet, but the committee said that they were looking for players with great talent as well as experience and those players who will be able to withstand such a competition like Overwatch World Cup physically.
Canada National Overwatch Team
Soon after the introduction of US national team at E3, Canada’s committee featured Chris ‘HuK’ Loranger, who is well-known community figure in Canada, Liam ‘Mangachu’ Campbell, a player who currently plays for Detroit Renegades, and Poklawls, a popular Twitch streamer. Their job was to select players that will represent Canada at the Overwatch World Cup.
Canada’s national team will feature Brady ‘Agilities’ Girardi currently DPS player in Immortals, Liam ‘Mangachu’ Campbell, Lane ‘Surefour’ Roberts, Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel, tank player in Yikes! and Randal ‘Roolf’ Stark, both of whom are currently playing for Cloud9 as well as Joe ‘Joemiester’ Gramano, who is currently a support player in compLexity Gaming.
The Group Stage
Blizzard has already announced the group stage of the competition. However, the date of start of the competition is not official yet. The United States will be facing Brazil. New Zealand, and Taiwan in Group C. On the other hand, Canada is in group F where they will be playing against Singapore, Russia, and Turkey.
The competition in the group stage begins sometime in the next couple of months. The main event or the playoffs of this competition will take place during the BlizzCon. This will be in November this year.