Forty-eight participants kicked off the 1000°C Summer Experience on Friday morning and one winner was crowned on the same day at the BasketBall court in Unilag. ‘Sesu’ – a debutant was named the FIFA 19 Champion, beating defending champion ‘Imaji Boy’ 3-1 in the Final Showdown.
GROUP STAGE
The new CyberGames entrant ‘Sesu’ started like a house on fire, beating ‘Temelola’ 1 – 0 in his opening game before moving on to ‘Frizzy’ and thumping him 6 – 1. He rounded up the group stage by outscoring ‘Dara’ in a five-goal thriller which ended 3 – 2 finishing at the top of Group F with 9 maximum points.
ROUND OF 32
‘Sesu’ came into the Round of 32 firing on all cylinders! He trashed ‘Uncool Josh’ 6 – 0 to book his place in the Round of 16.
ROUND OF 16
The new boy continued to wow everyone by scoring five against ‘BobbyVik’ who could only get one goal past Sesu’s defence in the closing stages of the game.
QUARTER-FINALS
The first real challenge for ‘Sesu’ was when he faced ‘Daniel’ in a fast-paced and free-scoring match which was the most entertaining game of the Quater-Finals. Once again ‘Sesu’ didn’t care about his defensive duties but was clinical in front of goal. The cracker-jack fixture ended 5 – 4 in his favour.
SEMIFINALS
Things got tougher here for ‘Sesu’ as he was paired with 6th ranked Otis who also had a terrific Friday afternoon. Once again he brought in his free-scoring game against ‘Otis’ who showed he is not a pushover. ‘Sesu’ was able to put four goals past ‘Otis’, the latter replied with three goals which weren’t enough to match the Newboy. At this point, this unlikely fairy-tale seemed like it would end with a “happily ever after”, as ‘Sesu’ got to the final to face defending champion and Nigeria’s No. 1 ‘Imaji Boy’.
ALL EYES ON THE FINAL
The tourney came to a climax on Friday evening when ‘Imaji Boy’ and ‘Sesu’ went head to head for the biggest prize after overcoming formidable opposition. ‘Imaji Boy’ flew out of the blocks and opened the scoring early, giving everyone the impressions that he was about to claim his 5th straight title. Just on the stroke of halftime, ‘Sesu’ leveled and it was all squared at the break. The second-half got back underway with ‘Sesu’ opening the scoring after the restart. ‘Imaji Boy’ had a string of chances to level up but he couldn’t find a clinical edge. On his quest for an equaliser in the dying minutes of the game, ‘Sesu’ struck and doubled his lead, dashing Imaji Boy’s hope of a come-back and beating the four-time champion 3 – 1 .
With that, ‘Sesu’ earned the top prize of N100,000; is now ranked 6th on the CyberGames Leaderboard and 4th on the CyberGames Career Earnings list.
Some debut!
Fela is the Co-founder of MediaVision Limited .
