Zaido, a student at Göttingen, is the Rocket League World Champion

Göttingen. Florian Rahden nicknamed “Zeddo” is the world champion in Rocket League: the student at the private university in Göttingen crowned Dr. Buhmann-Akademie Hannover in the title fights in Dallas (USA) for the eSports champion for university teams. As the runners-up of their group in the preliminary round, Rahden and teammates Fabian “Fabso” Bock and Nicholas “Buzzi” Steinhauser eliminated three American teams in elimination matches and thus brought the World Championship title to Europe for the first time.

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When they won the final, the three and their coach Julian “Phoenix” Brown were dumbfounded at first: “We couldn’t really understand it,” says Rahden. What the team achieved is still “not really received.” It was an “indescribable feeling” when the German national team stood at the top of the podium on the stage.

Rocket League World Cup: Huge stage and huge backdrop

And the stage was the largest they had ever been on: the World Championship was being held in a very large convention center, which was also hosting the Dreamhack Game Show. “There were thousands of people at the show itself, and we certainly had a thousand live spectators, we’ve never played against such a large backdrop,” says Rahden. In Germany, LAN events feature “100 spectators when the going gets tough”.

A best-of-five format was played in the group stage and quarter-finals, from the semi-finals, matches lasted a maximum of seven matches of five minutes each. In Rocket League, a type of digital car soccer, each player controls a car and the game is three-on-three. Cars can also fly and destroy opponents.

The tournament starts badly with defeat

The three-day tournament started nervously for the team, also because of the large crowd, but the tension quickly subsided: “On Friday we still got nervous, on the second day we were in our world,” says the newly crowned world champion. The paparazzi are also no longer noticed. Key to success: “Then we kept telling ourselves to stay calm and relax. We laughed a lot too, it helped.”

However, the tournament began with a defeat against West Virginia University: “We played very well,” says Rahden. I was especially upset that we “we can’t play all day on Fridays anymore” – due to bankruptcy, dr. Bohmann Akademi missed the group final and was only allowed to step in again on Saturday.

In the final, the team wins an individual category

The next matches went better: victory over Dorans Boxfish, another team from Europe, saw the team circling captain Rahden through to the quarter-finals. There it stopped Akron Zips Blue, then Columbia College in the semifinals. “We never thought we could become world champions – and then suddenly we found ourselves in the final,” Rahden looked back. Then the team said to themselves, “If we make the long haul and fly for ten hours, we can also get the thing.”

There was no special tactics for the final: “We played the same way as always.” However, Fisher College players were known to be individually stronger and played in the NHL. “We relied on the team alliance because we knew we could only beat them as a team,” says Rahden. For example, “Psy” played very well individually, while the others did the “dirty work”. “We always complemented each other,” at the end the three Germans celebrated the victory 4: 3 along with their coach.

The world title also comes with $20,000 in prize money. What happened with the money? Rahdan laughs: “First we wait for it to arrive. That could easily take half a year.” After that, the team would like to “see the world together a little bit,” and catching a glimpse of the Northern Lights in Norway “would be my dream.”

GT/ET