The CS:GO LAN event of ECS Championship S7 Finals by FACEIT is right around the corner. The tournament represents the epic finale of the online leagues with the same name, which took place in Europe and North America.
ECS Championship S7 Finals will take place in London, UK between June 6th – 9th. The competition offers an impressive prize pool of $500.000 and brings together eight of the strongest teams in Europe and North America. For those with an interest in esports betting, this is a must-see event, as it provides numerous CS:GO betting opportunities.
In this ECS Championship S7 Finals tournament preview, we will provide you with the key information you need to know about the event and then analyze the teams in order to assess their strength and pecking order.
ECS Championship S7 Finals Structure
ECS Finals S7 follows a very simple structure, made up of a group stage followed by Playoffs. The group stage consists of two groups of four. Each group will be played in a double elimination format, with the best two teams advancing to the Semifinals. The initial round of matches consists of Bo1 encounters. All other matches throughout the event are Bo3.
ECS Championship S7 Finals Group Seeding
ECS Championship features eight strong teams. These teams will be divided into two groups of four:
Group A
- Astralis
- NiP
- FURIA Esports
- NRG Esports
Group B
- Team Vitality
- MIBR
- Complexity Gaming
- North
The groups for the ECS Season 7 Finals in Wembley, London 🇬🇧👇
Group A:
🇩🇰 @astralisgg
🇸🇪 @NiPGaming
🇺🇸 @NRGgg
🇧🇷 @furiaggGroup B:
🇺🇸 @compLexity
🇧🇷 @mibr
🇩🇰 @TheNorthIsHere
🇫🇷 @TeamVitalityRead more about the groups: https://t.co/7TjmK6wh33 #ECS7 pic.twitter.com/VbYXobwlP9
— ECS (@ecs) May 28, 2019
In Group A of ECS Championship S7 Finals, Astralis should easily qualify by winning the group. The battle for the 2nd available Playoffs spot will be fierce though, as the skill difference between the other three teams is both small and hard to measure. In theory, NRG is slightly better than NiP and NiP is slightly better than FURIA. However, NiP is known to perform quite well at LAN events and since they won the European qualifier, we expect them to be in the Semifinals at ECS Championship S7 Finals. Anything less than that would be a disappointment for the Swedes.
Group B of ECS Championship S7 Finals is less unpredictable, unless MIBR underperforms again. If FalleN and his squad perform at their real value, then they’ll certainly qualify for the Playoffs, although probably from the second position. And that’s because Vitality is now one of the best teams in the world and is expected to dominate their group. Another thing that favors these two teams is the fact that the other two competitors haven’t been playing very well over the last 6 months.
ECS Championship S7 Finals Team Analysis
Here’s a quick analysis of the four most important competitors at ECS Championship S7 Finals.
Astralis
Astralis has to win this tournament. If ECS Championship S7 Finals marks another disappointing result for the Danes, this may well be the beginning of the end for them, at least when it comes to being the number one team in the world.
Astralis goes into ECS Championship S7 Finals with the creeping memories of their last few BLAST Pro Series failures. Because of those results, Astralis is no longer feared. They are now just another strong team and they showed they can bleed. We expect both MIBR and Vitality to represent a real threat for them in this competition. MIBR already managed an unbelievable performance against Astralis at one of the last few BPS events, where they defeated them 16 – 2. As for Vitality, they are now strong enough to beat anyone on a good day. Not to mention that Astralis is officially no longer considered the number 1 CS:GO team in the world having Team Liquid beat ENCE at DreamHack Masters Dallas 2019.
The world rankings have been updated, and for the first time in more than a year, we are not ranked as #1.
Nevertheless, the vision remains the same, and we’re ready to compete in London for #ECS7! 🇬🇧#ToTheStars ✨ pic.twitter.com/sMoGU0uPCE
— Astralis (@astralisgg) June 3, 2019
The least we expect from Astralis at ECS Championship S7 Finals is a Grand Final participation. If they get there and then lose against Vitality or MIBR, it wouldn’t be a tragedy and people would probably still regard them as the best team in the world overall. But if they fail to do that, then we think they are no longer the world’s best CS:GO team.
Ninjas In Pyjamas
NiP’s had some rough results lately, but much of that had to do with their roster issues. One of their players, dennis, initially had some problems and was replaced by draken. However, after he returned one month later, he again encountered some problems and wasn’t able to attend his team’s latest tournament, DreamHack Masters Dallas. Ultimately, NiP had a poor result at the event after playing with their coach as a substitute for him.
This season, NiP had a great performance at IEM Katowice Major, where they finished 5th – 8th. They also managed to finish 5th – 8th at StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 7 and 3rd at BPS Madrid 2019. Apart from these results, it’s been a dead season for f0rest and the rest of his crew.
Going into ECS Championship S7 Finals, we have positive expectations from NiP and we believe they have an excellent chance of playing in the Semifinals. Anything more than that would be a miraculous result. Their main rival in Group A is NRG. We’re not worried about Astralis here because the Danes are too many levels above NiP to even discuss the issue. The only real battle is for the 2nd place. Nobody in Group A can touch Astralis, even in their current form.
Team Vitality
Along with ENCE, Vitality is the team of the moment at the top of the CS:GO rankings, having climbed over 40 positions in just six months. This French roster is clearly proving that French CS:GO isn’t dead. In fact, it’s rapidly becoming the force it once was.
Vitality is currently sitting at number 5 in the global rankings and their results over the last few months have been very good. At the recent cs_summit 4, they even won the title by beating Team Liquid in the Grand Final.
As a result of their transformation, Vitality is now a team that can beat anyone, including Astralis. This makes them a prime candidate at playing in the Grand Final of ECS Championship S7 Finals. It’s hard to say at this point what their chances would be in case such an encounter occurs, but we believe that the combination between Astralis’ lack of form and Vitality’s excellent form could lead to an upset.
Third consecutive week of competition for our CSGO squad, they’ll be back Thursday in the @ecs Season 7 Finals 🐝😊 #VforVictory pic.twitter.com/O3QHIOnNof
— Team Vitality (@TeamVitality) June 3, 2019
As the tournament starts, keep an eye on Vitality and try to assess their form based on how they play in their first match. The team has huge potential but we need to see if they can deliver against some of the world’s best.
MIBR
MIBR has been in a rough situation lately. Quite clearly, the roster changes they made five months ago haven’t brought them the glory they were probably hoping for at the time. And time is running out rather quickly. If MIBR doesn’t succeed in getting at least one Grand Final result in the next three months, so that they can see that there’s hope for the roster, we expect felps to be removed on first occasion and replaced with some other player, most likely from Brazil.
In 2019, MIBR had one excellent result at IEM Katowice Major, where they finished 3rd – 4th. A second one would be their 3rd place finish at BPS Miami. And their third and final important result for this season up until this point was their 3rd – 4th place at IEM Sydney.
This MIBR roster has amazing potential. All they need is to played the way they used to play two years ago, back when they were winning trophy after trophy. If coldzera can get back to his best self again, then MIBR is likely to play in the Grand Final of ECS Championship S7 Finals. In any case, we expect them to finish 3rd – 4th in the worst case scenario.
