Look, it was always going to happen, wasn’t it? Anyone who seriously believed it would go as planned was probably a bit delusional.

Of course the UK wouldn’t win.

The Esports Federation, hosts of both the Esports World Cup and the Esports Nations Cup, announced on Tuesday that the inaugural edition of the latter tournament won’t be going ahead in November. The reason is pretty obvious - it’s tough to host a giant sporting event in Riyadh at the moment.

While the EWC was moved in space, to a completely different sh-tty city, they took a different page out of Einstein’s book this time, and decided to move the tournament in time instead. The first edition of the tournament will now take place in November of 2027, so at least CYPHER and the lads will still get their chance.

Or not.

It seems that the teams who put their time and money into qualifying for this cup will unfortunately have to try again in a year. While the EF have said they’ll still fulfil their financial obligations, it’s a big blow to the teams with players who really could have used this break.

WOOD7 certainly had a lot to say about it. And we’re convinced CYPHER is some kind of anti-Midas with how every org - and now tournament - he touches dies. Gizmy, stay away.

But there is an interesting question posed. Why did the qualifiers even happen?

Look, if you listen to Overtime on Inferno, you’ll know we’re not experts in geopolitics beyond the foreign curse words Sam has taught himself in Premier games, but when the qualifiers for the main event were going ahead in July, we were pretty sure this tournament wasn’t going to happen in Riyadh.

But played they were regardless, leading us to believe the tournament would follow the EWC, which - considering the sheer scale of the event - has had a fairly successful relocation to Paris over the summer. As s0und said, why not do it again?

We figure there’s only one explanation, and we agree wholeheartedly:

UK CS can never be allowed to win.