Playing the Fifa video game was once regarded as a fun hobby but 32 players from around the world are battling this week in London for a $250,000 winner’s cheque

On the big screen at the O2 Nicolas99fc is nibbling at his top lip. Short, skinny and barely filling out his junior-sized football shirt, the Argentinian – real name Nicolás Villalba – does not look like an athlete feared the world over. But this is eSports, where the skills required for success are as much mental as physical, and the 18-year-old is favourite to win this weekend’s Fifa eWorld Cup and take home $250,000.

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The eWorld Cup has 32 players from around the world competing at Fifa 18, the pre-eminent football video game, in its Ultimate Team mode. In many ways the tournament resembles the real deal in Russia this summer. The competition goes first through a group stage and then four knockout rounds. There are contrasting styles, possession play coming up against the high press. Matches are decided by who handles the pressure better. There are also differences, however, such as the fact most teams have two Ronaldos up front and Ruud Gullit in midfield.

The champion will be decided on Saturday in front of an expected crowd of 3,000. With as many as 20 million players entering the qualification process it has taken nine months and countless hours artfully deploying the skill buttons to decide the finalists. According to the YouTube personality and Fifa impresario Spencer Owen, acting at this World Cup as a kind of eSports Gary Neville, the competition has never been tougher.

“This is a game played by millions of people across the world, mostly for fun and for a hobby,” Owen says. “There are different ways of playing it, if you like, and these guys are operating at the highest possible end of that. I’ve been working at Fifa events for four years and originally it was just a few guys getting together and trying to win a couple of grand. That prize money has gone up a hundredfold and there’s a whole load of growth to go. In terms of the scene here, in the amount of people interested in it and watching online, the actual sheer spectacle of it, it’s just massively increased.”

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On the first day of competition that spectacle is largely virtual. With no crowd in the arena and competitors and their opponents sitting in separate booths the action makes sense only through a screen. More familiar is the commentary, provided by two young men in suits who observe “you don’t give Patrick Vieira that much room in the box”. There is a referee in every booth, largely there to record match events and prevent time-wasting, and this year, for the first time, competitors will be subject to random drug tests.

The substances that give an edge in eSports are stimulants like Adderall; the ability to focus consistently, potentially for hours on end, is perhaps the key quality that marks out elite Fifa players from the legions of armchair enthusiasts across the world. “Concentration is by far the biggest skillset in eSports,” Owen says, “These guys are all great so if you take your foot off the gas for one minute, you can be done.

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“In Fifa it is also about reaction time rather than hand/eye coordination like in shooting games. That’s why you see older players in Fifa. In other eSports they retire at 21.” Last year’s runner-up, the German Kai Wollin, is 29.

The world champion is an Englishman, Spencer Ealing, who goes by the soubriquet Gorilla. The 21-year-old avoided giving any interviews in the buildup to the tournament, the better to focus entirely on training, but he is a rare example of a British eSports success story. European nations, and Britain in particular, lag far behind north America and Asia in the most popular eSports like Fortnite, League of Legends and Dota 2. Fifa, however, is an exception with Britain, France and especially Germany taking the game very seriously.

“Germany have 20 guys who could win this, 12 in the tournament, eight who could have been here,” Owen says. “England have really got only two or three guys you’d put your hat on. The reason the Germans have got so many is that they have a better structure. They were the first to it, Wolfsburg were the first club to get into it. They have a competitive domestic league [the eSport Bundesliga]. They were just a bit ahead of everyone else.”

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If England playing catch-up with the Germans is a story familiar from other forms of football, then the gap is at least closing. Unsurprisingly Manchester City are at the forefront, with two members of their squad (neither British) at the tournament – Wollin, and Marcus Jørgensen from Denmark. Other clubs, from West Ham to Bournemouth and even Fleetwood, have their own gaming teams and rumours suggest the Premier League is finally in discussions to launch its own league.

With a massive potential audience and a broadening list of sponsors eSports continues to boom and Fifa alongside it. As the game becomes more professional so barriers to entry will rise but right now a kid from Buenos Aires can still be a digital Roy of the Rovers, going from bedroom to arena in a couple of years.

For Nicolas99fc the mark of an eSports champion is not too different from that of an on-field one. “You’ve got to be able to read the play,” he says after cruising through the group stages undefeated. “You’ve got to have much focus and confidence in your ability. In normal life I don’t have much faith in myself but, when I am focused in the game, I have the power to do anything.”