As is with almost all sports competitions around the world, the Spanish premier football competition LaLiga has shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak. But Ibai Llanos, a famous Spanish esports commentator, stepped in to make sure that football fans in Spain will see at least some LaLiga competition.
A week ago, he organized FIFA 20 match between defender Sergio Reguilon(Sevilla) and striker Borja Iglesias from Real Betis. The event was surprisingly popular and was watched by 62,000 people on his Twitch channel, which gave Ibai an idea to do something bigger.
In just a few days, he managed to pitch the idea of a charity tournament to Spanish footballers and clubs, which received a widely positive reception. Eventually, 19 clubs agreed to participate, with only Real Mallorca pulling out. In Real Madrid, several players showed interest in representing their club in this competition, so they even had to organize qualifiers within the club, between Thibaut Courtois, Dani Carvajal, and Marco Asensio. Asensio, who's suffering from ligament injury since the summer, won the Real Madrid's playoffs and proceeded to represent his club this weekend. It turns out that he'll eventually become a champion of the whole event.
Asensio clearly had some excessive FIFA sessions during his recuperation, which allowed him to win quite convincingly. He dominated in semi-finals against Eibar's Edu Exposito with 7-0, and then he won the finals against Leganés player Aitor Ruibal, with the final score 4-2.
This wholesome tournament was organized with the idea to raize funds for coronavirus fight, and it did quite an excellent job on that field. All of the donation money from the stream went right into that fund. During the three days of the tournament, fans donated €140,000, which will be used to help people who are fighting coronavirus in Spain, which is one of the countries that are currently suffering the most from the outbreak, and the worse is expected yet to come.
Here's the list of players that were representing their clubs on the tournament: Sergi Roberto (Barcelona), Marco Asensio (Real Madrid), Sergio Reguilon (Sevilla), Adnan Januzaj (Real Sociedad), Jason (Getafe), Marcos Llorente (Atletico Madrid), Carlos Soler (Valencia), Manu Morlanes (Villarreal), Jose Antonio Martinez (Granada), Gorka Guruzeta (Athletic Bilbao), Ruben Garcia (Osasuna), Carlos Clerc (Levante), Lucas Perez (Alaves), Pedro Porro (Valladolid), Edu Exposito (Eibar), Kevin Vazquez (Celta Vigo), Aitor Ruibal (Leganes), Adri Embarba (Espanyol).
If you are interested in VODs, you can find them on Ibai's Twitch channel.
¡Enhorabuena, madridistas! 🥇
— eLaLiga Santander (@esportslaliga) March 22, 2020
🏆 El @realmadrid de @marcoasensio10 se proclama campeón de #LaLigaSantanderChallenge 🏆
Y lo más importante: ¡Más de 140.000€ recaudados! 👏 pic.twitter.com/pDsY9WTufi