The Nigeria Football Team

Gernot Rohr was thrown up again and again. After the decisive 1-0 win over Zambia, the 64-year-old coach’s players rejoiced. With a big smile on his face and a small Nigeria flag in his right hand, Rohr was happily walking over the tartan track at Godswill Akpabio Stadium in Uyo. The globetrotter had just led the 1996 Olympic champion to his sixth World Cup participation.

No wonder that his contract was extended until 2020 at the end of November. “He has done his job very well and now doesn’t have to go to the World Cup in uncertainty about his future,” said association president Amaju Pinnick.

Super Eagles are permanent guests of the World Cup

The Super Eagles, who failed France 2-0 in the Round of 16 in Brazil, are permanent guests at the World Cup. Since 1994, the Super Eagles have only been missing at the 2006 finals in Germany. Nigeria made it to the round of 16 three times.

But this success could not be foreseen. When Rohr took up his fourth engagement as national coach in Africa in August 2016 (after Gabon, Niger and Burkina Faso), he had a huge mountain of work ahead of him. Five months earlier, Nigeria surprisingly missed qualifying for the 2017 Africa Cup as 2013 Champion. The proven Africa expert, who lives in France and owns a hotel in Lege-Cap-Ferret, had to create new structures, establish a suitable game philosophy and act as a mediator between the association, the Ministry of Sport and the stars working abroad.

Rohr rewarded himself with his first World Cup participation and is the second German head coach at the tournament in Russia, alongside national coach Joachim Löw. Nigeria were the first African team to qualify for the World Cup confidently and without defeat. Rohr lost only one of eleven games as Nigerian national coach: The already insignificant last game of the messed up Africa Cup qualification against South Africa (0:2).

For game designer John Obi Mikel, who has already played in Brazil and currently works for Tianjin Teda in China, the tournament in Russia is something special: “I am proud to be captain of this team. My wife is Russian. “You and our children will be cheering for us at the World Cup.” In addition to Mikel, Alex Iwobi (Arsenal FC), Kelechi Iheanacho (Manchester City) and Victor Moses (Chelsea FC) are top performers. Mainz central defender Leon Balogun is an undisputed regular under the gun. The odds are good for the” Super Egales” to reach the second round means bettingsites.ng.

African champions Cameroon were beaten 4-0 in World Cup qualifying. In mid-November, captain Mikel’s team, the former Chelsea midfielder, turned a 2-0 deficit into a 4-2 victory in a test match against runners-up Argentina. With the exception of their missing superstar Lionel Messi, the South Americans played in their strongest line-up.

During this match, the Nigerian football association NFF announced the agreement in the discussion about the player bonuses due for qualifying for the World Cup. At the 2014 World Cup, there had still been fierce disagreements about the premium payments. These culminated in a training strike of the players. After all, the Nigerian sports minister had to come to Brazil and distribute four million US dollars in cash among the players. At the insistence of Rohr, this problem was also solved in time this time. 2.4 million dollars were set as a premium for qualifying for Russia. Further funds are still to flow. More details about the world cup you can find under www.russland-wm2018.de.

eSport in Europa – Still behind?

After looking at Korea, we now look into our realms. Because where can we better understand the culture than in our own region? This time we look at the whole thing – in which country which eSport title is played most often and where do the players earn the most money. In the first part we dedicate ourselves to the history of European eSports and this will amaze many of you.

In contrast to typical German sports, eSports continue to play a very small role in our society. But Europe has also produced one of the best-known companies in eSports.

The early years

The history of European and predominantly German eSports is very difficult to reconstruct. While the first offline tournaments were held in America in 1972 with the game “Pong”, eSports in Germany began relatively late. There were always a few smaller clans, but it wasn’t until 1996 that the first clans were founded, and their success can still be seen today.

At that time, “Orcana”, “SK Gaming” and “pod virtual gaming” were the first teams in Germany to play Quake professionally. All this happened in the years 1996-98, when the games “Quake” and “Doom” were the titles par excellence to run eSport. Even greater importance was attached to eSport in Germany with the release of the online shooter “Counter-Strike“. The game from Valve was one of the main reasons why eSport became so big in Europe and other games managed to inspire so many people.

The various leagues also played a major role in the history of Europe: towards the end of the 1990s, the first major leagues were founded, most of which were not only active at national level. This included, for example, the German Clan League.

Electronic Sports League

It is probably the best-known league in eSports. The DeCl, or all of you better known as ESL. In 1997 Ralf Reichert founded the “DeCl” and thus laid the foundation for the most successful and largest league of its kind. Acer sat down with Ralf Reichert to talk about ESL, SK and eSport in general.

In 2000 the name was changed to ESL – Electronic Sports League. At the end of 2013, it comprised 4 million registered members and 950 thousand teams. Meanwhile ESL has several tournaments on national and international level.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator