The ESL have just announced the participants and the first stages of their 2007 European NationsCup. 30 countries have been named and the prizepot has reached a sum of 50,000 Euros.

It is always exciting to see the best players from every country represent their nation and battle it out. However, it is difficult to organise such an even and make sure everything goes to schedule, as we all witnessed with the more recent Clanbase NationsCup.Lets hope the ESL NationsCupis more organised and more exciting this year.

As the Pre-Season proceeds the participant now come together and get ready to start the 50,000 Euro European Nations Championship 2007. So we are proud to present the participants for the new season. Exactly 30 nations will participate in the Counter-Strike tourney. So you will have the chance to see 6 matches in the Qualification Round 1.

Here are the teams that have been listed.

Main Round

Germany	Sweden	Poland
France	Austria	Norway

Qualification Round 3

Finland	Spain	Russia
Denmark	Bulgaria	Beligum

Qualification Round 2

UK	Slovakia	Netherlands
Hungary	Greece	Switzerland

Ranked attending QR 1

Romania	Czech Rep.	Turkey
	Israel

Not Ranked attending QR 1

Lithuania	Italy	Luxembourg
Portugal	Croatia	Latvia
Ukraine		Bosnia & Herz.

There are 12 teams in the Qualification Round 1, 4 of the ranked will play versus 4 of the unranked and the rest will be drawn against eachother. The draw for these matches will take place sometime within the next couple of weeks.

Teams will move onto each qualification round with more nations joining along the way. Only 6 of the potential 24 countries will join up with the nations already in the main round. More information about the tournament and its format can be found on the official webpage.

HLTV.orgas always will do its best to bring you all the HLTVs for the matches and all the coverage. You can start by checking out our coverage page for the ESL NationsCup.