Hello! Hopefully you’ve been enjoying the fever pitch excitement (ok, tepid excitement) the CM9798 World Cup is generating. I realise I haven’t actually explained the concept to anybody outside of a select few, so let’s put that right.

How’s it going to work?

You may recall a few months ago I wrote about managing any International team in CM9798. Every now and again something sparks in my brain and I get all giddy at what happens. I have been told this is called “having an idea.”

The maximum number of human players on CM9798 at any one time is 16. The World Cup is this summer. Let’s ride that wave and have a CM9798 World Cup. Easy, right?

But CM9798 doesn’t have network facilities?

You’re right. There wasn’t an awful lot of network games going on in 1998, people had to actual spend time with each other for multiplayer fun. Whilst we aren’t going to stoop to such levels, the CM9798 Cup that I ran in October last year proved that using screen share and Twitter DM’s, CM9798 matches can take place without having to smell each other.

But they were friendlies, how will this work?

It’s the actual World Cup as scheduled by the game. Whilst that brings it’s own challenges, it’s more authentic and means we’ll have suspensions, injuries and such to contend with.

Here are the groups:

Who is taking part and who got who?

Me plus 15. The 15 are made up of some of our affiliates, friends of the blog, fans of the game. I don’t mean to sound cheesy but I could have had a full 32 if the game would allow it, such is the kindness of the community. If you missed out, I am sorry. We’ll hopefully do it again someday.

There was a draw involving kinder egg pods…

Or you can see this terrific graphic I made here – the two TBD’s have now been confirmed and are in the graphic below. Incidentally, if anybody loves making graphics and wants to make me some for nothing, I’d love it. I imagine that is unlikely but shy bairns etc

When are the games actually happening?

The plan is to run the tournament in the lovely gap between the end of the season and the start of the actual World Cup. That’s quite a way away, but the managers have teams and squads to sort out. Also, the game is ridiculously slow due to the huge amount of players I have loaded, it’ll take a while to even reach June.

Will there be a prize?

There will be a trophy, yes. Again, if anyone out there wants to sponsor the event in exchange for some sort of prize, I’m all ears.

Thanks for reading and keep a look out for the previews in the coming weeks.