Charleroi Esports 2019 is a tier 2 CS:GO event that brings together several former giants. These teams are currently struggling, but for the old times’ sake, they’ve been reunited thanks to the direct invites offered to them by the organizer, LouvardGame.
⚡️ #CharleroiEsports @CharleroiEsport is coming !
— Charleroi Esports (@CharleroiEsport) March 27, 2019
Charleroi Esports 2019 is scheduled to take place in Charleroi, Belgium between April 12th and April 14th. In other words, this will be a weekend event meant to attract a nostalgic audience whose main interest will be in meeting the players. As they say, oldies but goldies. Especially the guys from Virtus.pro.
Charleroi Esports 2019 Event Format and Teams
Charleroi Esports 2019 brings together 8 teams.
- G2 Esports
- Team LDLC
- Team Vitality
- pro
- Team GamerLegion
- Sprout
- Epsilon Esports
- BOOT-dream[S]cape
The first five of these teams got direct invites. The other three had to go through qualifiers.
In terms of its structure, Charleroi Esports 2019 will take place in two stages: Group Stage and Playoffs. The Group Stage consists of two groups. Each of them will be played in a double-elimination format (GSL). The opening and winners’ matches will be Bo1. The elimination and decider matches will be Bo3. The top two teams from each group advance to the Playoffs Stage, which consists of two Semifinals and one Grand Final, all of them Bo3.
Charleroi Esports 2019 Team Analysis
As a whole, Charleroi Esports 2019 is an average CS:GO event, both in terms of prizes (100.000 Euro) as well as in terms of its participants. Sure, some of the competitors are still relevant in today’s environment, meaning that they can go head to head with other tier 1 teams and possibly even win in some cases. But for the most part, Charleroi Esports 2019 is a way of providing the top French teams with an opportunity to compete in a safe environment, display their skills and earn some money.
Apart from the main CS:GO players from France, we also have some Germans and Poles in the mix, as well as other nationalities. Charleroi Esports 2019 should be an enjoyable event and an excellent opportunity for those with an interest in CS:GO betting. That’s because both Team Vitality and G2 Esports are considerably better than the other competitors, while Team GamerLegion and probably LDLC are considerably weaker than everyone else.
Heree’s a short analysis of each of the 8 teams that are taking part in Charleroi Esports 2019.
G2 Esports
G2 Esports has been on the rise recently, after an abysmal year in 2018. The team finished 12th – 14th at IEM Katowice, 3rd at WESG 2018-2019 and 2nd in the European qualifiers for DreamHack Masters Dallas 2019.
Overall, we’re starting to see this French team climb back from the abyss and qualify for tier one events again. It’s not yet clear how good they can become in their current formula, but at an event like Charleroi Esports 2019, there’s only one team that is arguably stronger than them. More precisely, Team Vitality.
By the looks of things, we’re expecting G2 Esports to survive the Group Stage and play in the Grand Final of this tournament. If they can do that, they’ve pretty much done their job here. Anything less would be an underachievement.
Team Vitality
This is the main contender for the title, by a long margin. Starting from November last year, Team Vitality upgraded their roster and performance until they reached a fairly high level. First, they won the title at DreamHack Open Atlanta 2018. Then, they qualified for the IEM Katowice Major by placing 2nd in Europe. And then they got two impressive results: 1st place at WePlay! Lock and Load and 9th – 11th place at IEM Katowice.
One of the most important things about Team Vitality is their roster: NBK-, apEX, RpK and two lesser-known players. The three names mentioned here are huge in CS:GO and more particularly in French CS:GO. They’re as important as kennyS, shox and a few other.
Going into Charleroi Esports 2019, we expect Team Vitality to either win or at least play in the Grand Final. There’s no reason for them not to achieve an impressive result, given that the competition is scarce and not that great.
Virtus.pro
The Poles have a new roster and as a result, we don’t expect them to be one of the best teams at Charleroi Esports 2019. They’re also playing with a trial player, Sobol, whom we haven’t even seen yet in action. There’s almost no information about him so anything could happen. But in principle, with so little experience and at such a young age, he will probably not be able to lift VP’s gameplay enough to help them score a top result at this tournament. In fact, if the Poles manage to get out of the groups, we’d be very impressed.
Going into Charleroi Esports 2019, our expectation is low for Virtus.pro. This once Major champion is still struggling to find a good enough roster that can help them qualify for important events and become relevant again.
Team LDLC
Well, Team LDLC doesn’t even seem to have a complete roster at this point. So we don’t know how they could possibly perform well enough to beat the other competitors. In all likelihood, we will see them fail miserably in the groups and exit Charleroi Esports 2019 after the first two matches.
Team GamerLegion
This is the same team that took part in the ELEAGUE Major at the beginning of 2018. However, only two of those players are still around. The other three were replaced and the results have been modest in recent months.
In Sprout’s case, we believe that luck will play a big part in their chances to survive the groups. Depending on who their opponent will be, they may or may not make it through. Because they’re right about in the middle in terms of strength.
Sprout
This is the same team that took part in the ELEAGUE Major at the beginning of 2018. However, only two of those players are still around. The other three were replaced and the results have been modest in recent months.
In Sprout’s case, we believe that luck will play a big part in their chances to survive the groups. Depending on who their opponent will be, they may or may not make it through. Because they’re right about in the middle in terms of strength.
Epsilon Esports
We haven’t seen Epsilon Esports accomplishing much this year. In fact, they earned absolutely nothing in prize money. However, they did manage to qualify for this tournament and a few others. In particular, they managed to become a part of ECS Challenger Cup.
Going into Charleroi Esports 2019, we don’t expect Epsilon Esports to make it out of the groups unless they get very lucky.
BOOT-dream[S]cape
This was the winner of the Asian qualifier and a careful analysis reveals that they have a lot of potential at this competitive level. BOOT recently took part in PLG Grand Slam 2018, which was an important CS:GO event held in Abu Dhabi. They finished 9th -12th out of 16, but proved capable of playing the game against fairly strong opponents.
Going into Charleroi Esports 2019, we believe that BOOT has a good chance of qualifying for the Playoffs. They’re around 5th in terms of strength, so it wouldn’t take that much for them to achieve this result.
