After a thrilling end to the Rest of World Vancouver Regionals, FUT Champions is back again, a mere 25 hours later, with another Regional Final — this time featuring the best players from the Americas: North, Central, and South.
Unlike any other region, the top three finishers from Saturday’s contest will earn a spot at the FIFA 17 Ultimate Team Championship (UTC) held in Berlin. Only the top two from yesterday’s ROW Regional are going to the UTC, while the top four of the 32 players will earn a chance at next month’s European regionals held in Madrid.
But no worries, we got some big names in the Americas too. On the PS4 side, there’s the favorite Christopher ‘didychrislito’ Holly who, in Season One, made his live-event competitive debut but has already gone on to sign for New York City F.C.; also, there’s John ‘JKO1707’ Oliveira and John ‘xbLeU’ Garcia, two more returners from S1 who are back for more.
On the other hand, the Xbox One division may have some more recognizable names for those who are fans of the FIFA YouTube community. First off, there’s Hashtag United’s newest esports addition Mike ‘Hashtag DM’ LaBelle, of course formerly known as ‘Dirty Mike.’ Then there’s Giuseppe ‘xGuastellax’ Guastella, the self-proclaimed ‘Godfather’ who is one of the most seasoned players in the competitive circuit; he got stuck with a tough group in Miami and is back to prove himself.
Here are what the groups look like for Saturday:
The rules are as follows. All four players play everyone in their group with a win worth three points, a draw worth two, and a loss worth zero. The top two players in each group advance to the double-elimination Knockout Round.
After both knockout tournaments are down to the finalists from each console, the winner of the Xbox One field will take on the winner of the PlayStation 4 bracket in a two-leg final with one fixture on Xbox One and one on PS4.
After both matches, the player with the higher aggregate score from the two is crowned the champion. If the aggregate score is tied, the player with more goals scored on their “non-native” platform (e.g. “away goals”) is the winner. If the match remains tied on “away goals”, a golden-goal third match will be played on the same platform as the second game and the winner decided by the first to score.
Tune in to watch the Season Two ‘Americas’ regional, streaming on Twitch and YouTube at 11:45 a.m. ET Saturday, and the Regional Grand Final on ESPN2 at 9 p.m. ET. You can also watch here on EA’s website.