With sporting leagues and events being cancelled even more frequently than video game trade shows, you’d have to put good money on UEFA Euro 2020 getting cancelled this summer. I mean, not only is it an international tournament, meaning that hundreds of thousands of fans would ordinarily flock to the matches, it’s got a new Europe-wide format with matches played in a wide range of host countries and cities.
So yeah, that’s not going to happen if Covid-19 Coronavirus is still a concern at all… but the eFootball PES 2020 DLC for the tournament will! Coming as a free update, it will arrive on PS4, Xbox One and PC on 30th April.
All 55 UEFA national teams will be featured in the DLC, with their latest kits and squads so they’ll be as up-to-date as possible. They’re also adding Wembley Stadium to the game, which is due to be the setting of the Euro final… but probably won’t. Saint Petersburg Stadium has also been recreated for the update to the game. That probably also won’t see any football this summer.
We might know for sure next week, as UEFA will be meeting to discuss all forms of football competition across the continent.
In the light of the ongoing developments in the spread of COVID-19 across Europe and the changing analysis of the World Health Organisation, UEFA has today invited representatives of its 55 member associations, together with the boards of the European Club Association and the European Leagues and a representative of FIFPro, to attend meetings by videoconference on Tuesday 17 March to discuss European football’s response to the outbreak.
Discussions will include all domestic and European competitions, including UEFA EURO 2020.
Further communication will be made following those meetings.
The DLC will tie into eFootball’s regular trickle of content, with Featured Players feeding into myClub, while there will be themed Matchdays for matches that won’t get played, and the Team of the Tournament will presumably just guess which players would have been good, were they able to play.
There’s also an online esports tournament, starting today, which will have players sensibly separated by online play as they duke it out to represent their country in an inaugural competition. Those online qualifiers, however, will lead to the top 16 countries sending their best players to Wembley for a two day event on 10-11th July, to become the first eEuro champion.
Maybe.
In our eFootball PES 2020 review, Aran wrote:
eFootball PES 2020 may be a symbolic start of a new era for Konami, but it feels like not much has changed over last year’s version of the game. In fact, it might even be that last year’s version plays a shade better compared to this version. When PES 2020 works properly it is sublime, but issues on the pitch need addressed to really be considered worth upgrading.
Source: press release, UEFA
