Dominik Ebebenge is a former official at Legia Warsaw, but now finds himself working on a truly unique football video game with Copa City – he sat down with Daily Star to talk about his career transitionTech09:00, 12 Apr 2025Copa City is doing something uniqueFootball truly is the world’s game, played or followed by most of us on this Earth. It’s big business, too, particularly in video games.While EA FC 25 dominates the on-pitch action and eFootball looks to overthrow it, Football Manager has taken the management side of things to new heights — although the cancellation of this year’s game certainly wasn’t ideal.‌Article continues belowStill, as more and more upstarts look to break into your virtual first eleven, there’s one game going about its business a little differently.Copa City, pegged for a 2025 release, is the debut title from Triple Espresso, and is focused on celebrating the effect football can have on the cities that host it.Daily Star sat down with Dominik Ebebenge, a former club official at Legia Warsaw and now co-founder of Triple Espresso, to talk about the vision of Copa City — and why there’s never been a better time to be the underdog.‌Players can work on fan zones, policing, and even catering“I'm a dreamer. I’ve always been,” Ebebenge starts when describing his unique career path.That initial dream was to work at Legia Warsaw, his boyhood club. He did so from the age of 16, working his way from a volunteer position to becoming the club’s head of sports.‌Noting a time in his life when he was “obsessed” with Football Manager, Ebebenge says his work at the club gave him an “extreme amount of exposure to a certain network” of contacts.Studying at Bath University, he split his time between studies, lectures, and travelling to European games and organising logistics of the football club.Triple Espresso’s co-founders were the owners of Legia Warsaw at the time and, after selling the club, the three wanted to stay linked with football. After initially leaning into esports, the team began a chapter “when we started making those key connections in terms of building our early team to start conceptualising the idea of introducing a new perspective into the existing football games landscape”.‌Ebebenge describes Copa City as a game about “everything that happens before that first whistle”.Copa City is intended to be complimentary to existing video gamesWhile the initial reveal of Copa City perhaps made it look akin to a Football Manager rival, Ebebenge explains it’s much closer to a management sim.‌“You are involved in everything from selling tickets to preparing catering zones,” he explains, pointing to the game being a delicate balancing act between the “needs and the wants of two different sides”.Those two sides are meeting in a one-off kind of event, where matches are held at a neutral location and you’ll need to manage elements that would otherwise be held behind the scenes.Pointing to the success of recent sports documentary series on streaming services, Ebebenge says the focus is on “where the camera follows before the game”.‌I asked if his prior career as a football club executive helped clubs buy into what the game is offering. After all, the studio has already secured the likes of Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Arsenal and Flamengo.“One hundred percent,” he says. “And I guess that answers or is partly an answer to the question that we hear all the time: Why hasn't anyone done it before?“We’ve heard that in some big places, to be honest. It’s not rocket science, but it takes some combination of some unique background stories and context to create that kind of an environment.”‌The team has already secured licenses for Bayern Munich and ArsenalThat focus on a special one-off event means you won’t be managing tactics, hiring staff, or negotiating transfers.Ebebenge says the focus remains on offering a complimentary experience that doesn’t encroach too much on other titles, although does acknowledge the current state of football games makes it a great time to kick off (see what we did there?) something new.‌I asked about the delay and subsequent cancellation of Football Manager 25, and he confessed that the team sees it as a “great opportunity”.“We've seen a certain momentum growing when it comes to the streaming platforms and clearly there's a common denominator in terms of that [behind the scenes] theme,” he said.“We see the industry being at a certain crossroads with what happened between FIFA and EA, and then obviously the delay of Football Manager.”‌So what about the time following launch? Is there scope for an annual franchise with Copa City? Ebebenge’s answer surprised us.“Right now we’re focused on a certain exciting selection of clubs, but we definitely see other avenues and other possibilities out there,” he added.“No one's ever said that football is the only theme that we have to show, and we see, you know, wider possibilities in that perspective that we are creating. There's so much more to be shown in football as it is, so we are already full of ideas for the future.Article continues below“Hopefully we’ll have a launch that we dream of and everything will go according to play, and we’re going to be here to stay for a good while.”For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.‌‌‌