Thanks to Jamie Hore for help with background information
English Premier League football club Manchester City have qualified for the FIFAe Club World Cup 2021, which is notably lacking other UK talent this year.
Manchester City Esports’ FIFA team consists of experienced British players Shaun ‘Shellzz’ Springette (pictured right) and Ryan Pessoa (left), who will be playing in the zone finals which run from February 24th to 28th 2021.
Man City have qualified for the FIFAe Club World Cup for a record four times now.
There are six zones in the FIFAe Club World Cup finals: Oceania, Asia, Africa and Middle East, North America, South America and Europe.
Man City are the only UK team in the finals, with other well-known names like Wolves, Fnatic, Tundra, Ellevens, West Ham, Burnley and others failing to qualify. Italian org Mkers also have a British player among them: Ethan ‘EthxnH’ Higgins.
However, it was harder for them to qualify this year, as The Loadout reports that FIFA organised the tournament, rather than EA, and made a change which saw the top 14 teams qualify instead of the usual top 28.
Due to the global health situation, the competition format had to be adapted to a remote production. Therefore and as a result, the number of teams going through to the final event had to be reduced.
— FIFAe (@FIFAe) January 18, 2021
The full list of European sides are as follows:
- Genoa Esports
- Riders
- RBLZ Gaming – RB Leipzig
- Mkers
- Team Gullit
- Wisla All in Games Krakow
- AC Monza Team Esports
- Zeta Gaming
- NOM eSport
- Manchester City Esports
- OFF META
- FC Schalke 04
- Mav3ricks MM Gaming Club
- Astralis
Teams in the FIFAe Club World Cup 2021 will be represented by two players who will compete for a total prize pool of $245,000. This is in addition to the $105,000 in prize money distributed after the online qualifiers.
Participants include football clubs and esports organisations.
You can see more info and the full list of qualified FIFAe Club World Cup teams on the FIFA website here.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He has almost two decades of experience in journalism, and left Esports News UK in June 2025.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He also previously worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation.
