Young Iranian gamer Kiarash Shokouhi, who participated in the FIFA 2016 category of the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) at the Paris Game Week, finished the competition in the fourth place.
Shokouhi, one of the three Iranians who reached the semi-finals, lost the game to Danish contender August Rosenmeier (who won gold) 5-1, Mehr News Agency reported.
The playoff match for the third place was held on November 1 where Shokouhi faced the German Erhan Kayman. Finishing the game with a no goal draw, he lost the match 7-6 out of sheer bad luck in the penalty shootouts, to take fourth place.
Like the real world cup, 32 players competed in the FIFA 16 tournament. In the first round, participants played in eight groups of four teams and the top two teams in each group entered the knockout stage where winners qualified for the next round.
Abbas Arzi, representative of ESWC computer games leagues in Iran and the head of the Iranian team in France, said, “Navid Borhani who was crowned first in last year’s FIFA 15 contest, won in his group, but failed to make it to the finals as he lost to his Romanian counterpart. Mehrdad Kompani-Moqadam, the other Iranian, could not qualify from his group as he lost in the knockout.
The Iran National Foundation of Computer Games sponsored the Iranian gamers.
Iran has garnered one gold medal in the event so far and is ranked 20th among the 31 countries that have won medals at all the editions of the ESWC.
Iran with more than 38 million internet users and 20 million gamers is the largest growing video games market in the Middle East.
As the largest global and multi-gaming competition, ESWC is an international professional gaming championship. Every year, winners of the national qualifier events in the world earn the right to represent their country in the ESWC Finals.
For 12 years, the ESWC has designed all modern sports touchstones, brought together over 100 nations, offered more than $2 million in cash prizes to champions and thrilled more than 500,000 spectators during its final offline events organized as the new shows of the 21st century.
