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What we learned from the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 esports season
Following OpTic Gaming’s successful defense of its Esports World Cup title in Paris, the curtain has fallen on the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 season. The latest installment of the Call of Duty League (CDL) featured everything from a much-needed return to Europe to several teams consistently battling at the top of the table for championship glory.
With franchises already revamping their rosters ahead of the new season, there was plenty we learned about the state of the ecosystem and what needs to happen for Call of Duty to reach even greater heights. sport-ipl.my
OpTic Texas is the team to beat
Across the four Majors, Champs, and EWC, OpTic Texas stood out as the best Black Ops 7 team. Although it only won two out of a possible six trophies throughout the season, the Green Wall finished no lower than second place. For the first time since 2011, OpTic appeared in every single Grand Final, a feat the organization last achieved in 2011’s Modern Warfare 3.
The quartet of Mason “Mercules” Ramsey, Cuyler “Huke” Garland, Brandon “Dashy” Otell, and Anthony “Shotzzy” Cuevas-Castro has cemented itself as one of the best squads of the CDL era. Armed with a well-balanced combination of ruthless slaying aggression, mechanical mastery, and the ability to make high-impact plays at any given moment, the Green Wall has an edge over anyone standing in its way.
Throughout the year, Shotzzy displayed an incredible understanding of the Black Ops 7 movement mechanics. By utilizing various jump spots for better vantage points alongside wall bouncing to bamboozle opponents, he made space for his teammates to make an impact while the opposition was focused on tracking him down.
With rostermania in full swing ahead of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 season, OpTic Texas is expected to stick with its current lineup, and who can blame them? Regular Grand Final appearances, topped off with Champs and EWC victories, give the franchise no genuine reason to make any kind of adjustment.
Meta diversity must improve
Despite containing a large arsenal of weaponry, Call of Duty esports is quick to dismiss any kind of rifle that’s deemed overpowered for competitive play. With almost all weapon categories hit with the ban hammer, it leaves a handful of viable options for the best players in the world to master.
Black Ops 7 began with the Dravec 45 submachine gun and the M15 Mod 0 assault rifle dominating the action. The Dravec quickly became stale despite possessing excellent damage output and low recoil. It even gave assault rifle players a run for their money at longer ranges.
In a bid to spice up the meta, the MPC-25 took its place in the second half of the season. Armed with additional mobility, players navigated the map at breakneck speed, significantly improving the viewing experience.
Following the end of the season, players and fans alike were quick to criticize the lack of variety and skill required to make an impact with the MPC-25. “MPC is more fun to watch, but it is legitimately the worst meta I’ve played,” wrote one fan.
“The MPC was more entertaining to me at first, but it looks stupidly OP now,” added two-time world champion Jordan “JKap” Kaplan.
Even with the arrival of a new weapon midway through the season, the Black Ops 7 meta failed to capture the imagination of fans and players. It’s time for the CDL to embrace everything that makes Call of Duty one of the biggest first-person shooters. Instead of restricting everything, reintroduce the ban-and-protect system from Black Ops 3, giving players a choice on what to ban and what makes it into a match.
With players having control over the available weapons, perks, and utility, each match becomes a battle of which teams can adapt to a unique arsenal designed to create a diverse meta featuring more than two weapons.
Strong viewing figures
Viewership metrics remain a key factor for determining whether an esports tournament is a success or a failure. In recent years, the CDL has experienced peaks and troughs. The Black Ops 7 season brought about consistency, signaling that times are changing for the franchised league.
Black Ops 7 peaked at 379,533 viewers during Major 4, hosted by the Paris Gentle Mates. Held in front of a huge crowd of passionate French fans, a clash between the hometown heroes and OpTic Texas put the league’s largest fan bases on the main stage, resulting in the biggest viewership peak of the year.
Major 4 set a new viewership record for the CDL, which recorded a low of 260,656 at Major 3 in Atlanta, Georgia. With all Majors peaking above 250,000 viewers, the CDL has demonstrated that the franchise model can yield solid results.
If the Modern Warfare 4 season returns to Europe and capitalizes on its huge fan base, there’s every chance next season can break more records and cement its place as one of the world’s most popular esports circuits.
Less reliance on nostalgia
The CDL is no stranger to using a trip down memory lane to inject new life into Call of Duty’s esports circuit. Black Ops 7 was no exception. Throughout the season, we saw Raid, Hacienda, Gridlock, Fringe, and Frequency return from previous Black Ops titles to bolster the map pool.
While nostalgia does have a part to play in ensuring there are enough viable battlegrounds for competitive play, it also proves that modern-day Call of Duty titles don’t have enough focus on how they will fare in a four-versus-four environment. Sure, the debuts of Scar and Den were solid, but when over half the pool is recycled, the lack of variety becomes stale quickly.
For Modern Warfare 4 to be a success, a focus on a completely original map pool can do wonders for both players and spectators. Players have new levels to master, while fans get a chance to see some new arenas take center stage in favor of maps that have appeared in the rotation for well over a decade.
More LAN tournaments
Online qualifiers for the Majors have become the norm in the current CDL era, and to an extent, they have their place as a platform that offers world-class competition without the logistics of running it offline. However, the league desperately needs more LAN tournaments across the world.
Black Ops 7 saw two events take place outside of North America, much to the delight of European fans desperately wanting to watch the world’s best teams and their hometown franchises in action. Even with a greater European presence, there’s still plenty of scope for more Majors in Modern Warfare 4.
The 2025/26 season featured six tournaments, including EWC. With crowds from Major 4 clearly demonstrating the huge demand for more in-person events, taking the number of LANs from six to ten means more chances for fans to attend events and more opportunities for the world’s top teams to showcase their skills.
More LANs also benefit the Challengers scene. Amateur players only have a handful of opportunities to compete in the same environment as the stars of the CDL. With more opportunities to prove their ability on LAN, it raises the skill levels of aspiring pros looking to break into the top tier.
The post What we learned from the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 esports season appeared first on Esports Insider.
Rassie vs Rennie: Battle of minds
Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry will once again see the coaching philosophies of Rassie Erasmus and Dave Rennie go head to head, writes CLINTON VAN DER BERG in SA Rugby magazine.
They thought it would be seamless, a baton passed in clean lines, a dynasty preserved in glass. New Zealand rugby has always told itself that story: that greatness is inherited, not fought over.
But rugby doesn’t move like that anymore.
The moment the old order was cleared out and Dave Rennie stepped into the vacuum, the air changed. Across the ocean, Rassie Erasmus was already constructing something colder, harder and far less sentimental. What should have been a continuation of tradition instead became a collision of ideologies.
This was never going to be beautiful.
What followed was not a duel of philosophies played out in sunlight and space, but something far more visceral: two men dragging the game into the shadows, stripping it down to pressure, power and psychological edge. A grind. Not a spectacle, but a fight in a dark alley where every inch must be taken, nothing given.
Erasmus is not smiling. He knows the data. He knows the history. For 15 years, across three continents and every tier of the global game, Rennie has acted as the ultimate saboteur of South African rugby’s physical empire.
While other coaches theorise about how to stop the Springbok machine, Rennie has spent a career dismantling it. He is the one coach who doesn’t blink.
To understand why Rennie’s appointment sends a tremor through the Republic, you have to look at the numbers. They are not merely good; they are targeted, a multigenerational curse.
Go back to 2010. The Junior World Championship semi-final. South Africa fielded a monstrous U20 side captained by CJ Stander, featuring future double World Cup winner Siya Kolisi, alongside Patrick Lambie, Elton Jantjies and Frans Malherbe. It was a golden generation wrapped in green and gold.
Rennie’s Baby Blacks did not just beat them, they thrashed them 36-7.
Fast forward to his tenure with the Chiefs between 2012 and 2017. Rennie faced South African franchises 24 times. He won 18.
The nadir for South Africa came in 2016 at Newlands, the heart of Western Province rugby. Rennie’s Chiefs arrived for a Super Rugby quarter-final and utterly humiliated a Stormers team packed with future world champions, leaving the pitch with a 60-21 victory tattooed on the local psyche.
Even his stint with the Wallabies, a team widely regarded as the most inexperienced and politically fractured Australian roster in 30 years, yielded a 75% success rate against the world champion Springboks. Three wins from four Tests.
When the Springboks look into the mirror, they see a giant. When they look at Dave Rennie, they see a reflection that refuses to blink.
The upcoming war between Erasmus and Rennie is a clash of fundamental rugby philosophies.
It pits the absolute control of an innovator against the tactical adaptability of a pragmatist.
Erasmus has built a legacy on industrial-scale suffocation. His tactical DNA is built on three unshakeable pillars: high-yield kicking for territory, an elite blitz defence that cuts off oxygen out wide and a muscular set-piece.
Erasmus chases marginal gains with obsessive, clinical detail. He will use traffic lights on top of stadiums, weaponise the laws to invent a 7-1 bench split and pull lineout variations out of schoolboy rugby if it gives his team a 1% edge. It is heavy, structured and relies on total clarity. The individual is subservient to the machine.
Rennie is the wrench thrown directly into those gears.
Where Erasmus wants control, Rennie creates chaos. His tactical blueprint does not try to out-scrum or out-maul the Boks; it attacks the very source of their oxygen: the breakdown.
Rennie’s teams play with a ferocious, hard-nosed edge at the ruck. They flood the tackle area, slow down the ball and turn the breakdown into a legal crime scene. By delaying Springbok possession by even two seconds, Rennie completely neutralises the Boks’ ability to launch their multiphase power game.
More dangerously, Rennie’s sides are entirely comfortable playing without the ball. They absorb the Springbok physical onslaught, refuse to give up behind-the-gainline yardage, and wait for the Boks to overcommit.
When the Springbok blitz defence rushes up to suffocate the play, Rennie uses late passing, sudden shifts in tempo and short attacking kicks to expose the vacant space behind the line. He turns South Africa’s aggressive defence into a liability, forcing the game into a broken, transition-heavy style where instincts triumph over structure.
The management styles of both men mirror their tactical outputs.
Erasmus rules through a combination of emotional transparency and intense patriotism. He constructs a ‘siege mentality’, an us-against-the-world narrative that binds his squad with a fanatical, blood-brother loyalty. His players know precisely what is required of them, down to the exact minute they will step off the bench as part of the Bomb Squad.
Rennie, a former school teacher from Upper Hutt, operates with a more delicate, human-centric touch. He does not use public-facing theatricality or media warfare. Instead, he builds deep, culturally unified squads founded on identity. At the Chiefs, it was the He piko he taniwha (At every bend, a chief) ethos that bound a diverse squad into a brotherhood.
Yet beneath that quiet exterior lies a brutally tough customer. Erasmus himself has frequently referenced the legendary stories of Rennie’s ‘Test match Thursdays’, training sessions so intensely physical they border on internal warfare.
Rennie’s teams do not get bullied because they are subjected to a weekly trial by fire before they ever touch the stadium grass.
The rugby public often expects a predictable clash of systems: South African brawn against New Zealand flair. Against standard systems, Erasmus is a grandmaster. He knows how to choke the life out of predictably structured opposition.
But Rennie brings global grit. Having coached the Chiefs, Glasgow Warriors and Wallabies, and had a stint in Japan, he possesses a far more pragmatic view of the game than a localised New Zealand coach. He understands northern hemisphere pragmatism just as well as he understands southern hemisphere transition play.
He is already looking to leverage structural shifts in New Zealand rugby to bring back battle-hardened, Japan-based veterans like Richie Mo’unga and Brodie Retallick. He is not interested in playing beautiful rugby, he is interested in winning the collisions.
“I coached against Dave Rennie when he was at Glasgow and I was at Munster, and even earlier,’ Erasmus remarked following the appointment. ‘Any time a new coach is appointed at the All Blacks, it creates an interesting period ahead. We are wary ahead of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry.”
“Wary” is polite coach-speak for not lekker.
“As a South African coaching against him, I think he might get it right at Test level but as far as I understood he had no mercy for guys [his players]. Not in a bad way but driven to get them ready for Saturday.”
Rennie brings asymmetric warfare. He represents the ultimate tactical counter-agent to the powerful Springbok system. He does not fear the altitude of Johannesburg or the physical aura of the South African tight five. His 15-year résumé proves he views the Boks’ physical dominance not as an intimidating barrier, but as a problem he has already solved.
The upcoming Test matches will not be a display of pristine, end-to-end rugby architecture. They will be messy. They will be violent. They will be defined by penalty risks, breakdown turnovers and high-collision desperation.
South Africa do not often face teams that out-muscle them. Rennie’s have consistently refused to be intimidated.
If Erasmus is rugby’s master planner, Rennie is the saboteur who knows exactly where to plant the charge.
This is not a new problem for the Springboks. It’s an old one.
And its name is Dave Rennie.
Photo: Huw Fairclough/Joe Allison/Ross Parker/Getty Images
The post Rassie vs Rennie: Battle of minds appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.
Performances des Guinéens : Fofana et Simakan buteurs, Cissoko titulaire
Les internationaux et binationaux guinéens évoluant à l’étranger ont une nouvelle fois animé les pelouses ce mardi.
À l’occasion de plusieurs rencontres de coupes nationales, certains d’entre eux se sont illustrés avec leurs clubs. Les buts de Mohamed Simakan et d’Ibrahima Chérif Fofana, ainsi que la titularisation de Kerfalla Cissoko, constituent les principaux faits marquants de la journée.
Australie/Coupe
Le Sydney FC s’est imposé sur la pelouse du SD Raiders (0-1), avec Alhassan Touré entré pour les vingt dernières minutes.
Russie/Coupe
Le Rodina Moscow a lourdement chuté à domicile face à Orenburg (1-4). Titulaire, Kerfalla Cissoko a quitté la pelouse à l’heure de jeu.
Suède/Coupe
L’AFC Eskilstuna a été éliminé par l’IK Oddevold au terme de la séance de tirs au but (4-4, 6-7). Entré en cours de partie, Ibrahima Chérif Fofana s’est illustré en inscrivant le troisième but des siens à la 70e minute.
Le FF Falkenberg s’est également incliné aux tirs au but face à l’IFK Skövde (2-2, 4-3). Hugo Komano a pris part à la rencontre.
Arabie saoudite/Coupe
Al-Nassr a dominé Al-Diriyah (1-4). Titulaire durant 65 minutes, Mohamed Simakan a trouvé le chemin des filets à la 11e minute pour le club de Riyad.
A. Diouma Bah
The post Performances des Guinéens : Fofana et Simakan buteurs, Cissoko titulaire appeared first on AFRICASPORT.ORG.
Vingt ans après le scandale du Probo Koala, l’Afrique est-elle toujours victime du «colonialisme des déchets»?
En Côte d’Ivoire, il y a 20 ans jour pour jour, Abidjan suffoquait sous les émanations des déchets toxiques. Plus de 500 tonnes de produits nocifs, débarqués par le navire Probo Koala puis déversés sur plusieurs sites de la capitale économique, répandaient une odeur nauséabonde et causaient la mort de 17 personnes. Deux décennies plus tard, que reste-t-il de cette catastrophe écologique et sanitaire ? L’Afrique subit-elle toujours le « colonialisme des déchets » que dénoncent des ONG ?
Wallabies welcome back star centres
Two key players have been named in the Wallabies squad for their two-Test tour of Argentina after recovering from injury.
Len Ikitau missed Australia’s two-Test series against Japan with an ankle injury, while Joseph Suaalii was sidelined for the second match because of a hamstring issue.
Both centres have now been included in Les Kiss’ squad for Tests in Argentina on 29 August and 5 September.
The new Wallabies coach has opted for continuity after Australia’s impressive start to his tenure, with the team beating Japan 35-32 in Osaka before producing a 56-17 rout in Townsville.
“As coaches we’ve looked to maintain consistency in selection with the bulk of this squad having laid a solid foundation over the past few weeks, through their hard work and connection on and off the field,” Kiss said.
“Touring Argentina presents another tough challenge for us as a new group and it’s one that we know will require us to go to another level as we continue to look to build and develop our game.”
ALSO: Cheika returns to rugby union
There is no place for fullback Jock Campbell, despite the Reds star being regarded as one of Australia’s leading outside backs.
Tom Wright is the only specialist fullback retained in the squad and is in line to earn his 50th Test cap during the tour.
Lock Miles Amatosero was unavailable for selection because of suspension.
Wallabies squad
Backs: Filipo Dauganu, Ben Donaldson, Carter Gordon, Isaac Henry, Len Ikitau, Max Jorgensen, Ryan Lonergan, Tate McDermott, Declan Meredith, Hunter Paisami, Dylan Pietsch, Harry Potter, Joseph Suaalii, Kalani Thomas, Tom Wright.
Forwards: Allan Alaalatoa, Angus Bell, Charlie Cale, Josh Canham, Massimo de Lutiis, Tom Hooper, Isaac Kailea, Fraser McReight, Josh Nasser, Brandon Paenga-Amosa, Billy Pollard, Aidan Ross, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Lachlan Shaw, Carlo Tizzano, Taniela Tupou, Rob Valetini, Jeremy Williams, Harry Wilson.
All eyes on Argentina
pic.twitter.com/aVbUZJCgmn
— Wallabies (@wallabies) August 19, 2026
– AFP
Photo: Craig Mercer/MB Media/Getty Images
The post Wallabies welcome back star centres appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.