Team Canada reveals roster for 2019 Overwatch World Cup

It’s almost that time of year again. For players known and not known to make their mark on the world stage in Overwatch. Regardless of if you’re in the Overwatch League, in Contenders, or just a ladder player, all skilled players have the chance to play for their country on a massive stage. And even better, it brings some players out of retirement or just out of inactivity in competitive play. All these points apply to the best North American team in previous world cups: Canada. Just earlier today, they released their main roster and backups for the 2019 Overwatch World Cup.

The starting roster consists of: Félix “xQc” Lengyel and Lucas “NotE” Meissner on tank, Lane “Surefour” Roberts and Brady “Agilities” Girardi on DPS, and William “Crimzo” Hernandez and Chris “Bani” Benell on support.

The third coming of xQc

xQc has changed a lot since the 2018 World Cup, with his stream and his popularity online skyrocketing since. After signing back into the league for the Gladiators’ Contenders team as a substitute, he hasn’t played a single game in Contenders. His streaming has been his focus, as well as developing a YouTube channel alongside it. But as the year drew on, that same question arose. Would he play in the World Cup? He’s been doing it since 2017 and has almost always impressed.

The doubts were squashed when he started playing more Overwatch on stream for training, and of course playing for a lot of the Team Canada tryouts. And it became official — he was coming back.

Say hello to your 2019 @TeamCanadaOW OWWC roster!

The 7 man roster:
🛡️@xQc
🛡️@NotEvenBleu
⚔️@agilities
⚔️@Surefour
⚔️@Mangachu_
💉@BaniOW
💉@Crimzo

Our backups:
🛡️@ChayneOW
🛡️@WalidTheMouffin
⚔️@akaydia1
💉@ZholikOW
💉@AutumnSoulsOW#NorthStrong 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/mQsEzcKlZy

— Team Canada OW 🇨🇦 (@TeamCanadaOW) July 29, 2019

Same roster, new results?

This starting roster is the exact same starting roster as 2018. While they did finish last year on the podium with bronze, it was bittersweet. They kept their reign of being the best North American team in the tournament from 2017, making it further than the United States. But they fell against an underdog China team, who then got blown out by the dominant South Korea.

The question for all fans is this: Is sticking with the same roster the right choice this year? One player that impressed all viewers in the tryouts was Walid “Mouffin” Bassal, a relatively unknown player up until these tryouts. Besides having some impressive stats on the ranked leaderboards, his claim to fame was his sudden substitution into Team Envy in Contenders. Not only did he play well, but he was arguably the best player in that match. This led to his tryouts, where he showed some great chemistry with xQc and was constantly showered with praise from the casters and coaches.

Yet he didn’t make it into the top roster, with Note making it in over him. We won’t truly know why, but even then, making this roster even as a substitute is amazing. He might fill in for Note if sickness or poor form tatters him, or even tactically on certain compositions. In any case, we’ll have to wait and see on Team Canada and if they keep their reign.