ESL Pro League Season 9 is quickly approaching. The 4 leagues it contains are scheduled to start on April 12th and last until May 23rd. After that, there will be a LAN event where the best teams from each region will be invited. Just like last year, ESL Pro League Season 9 will be an online event until the Finals, with matches taking place every week.
In this article, we will give you an overview of the best teams in Europe. This is definitely one of the most important regions to follow if you’re interested in the event.
ESL Pro League Season 9 Europe Team Analysis
The battle in Europe will be fierce, as more than half of the 16 competitors are very solid teams with world-class rosters. Here are some key facts about the European teams that will be competing at ESL Pro League Season 9.
Astralis
For the past year or so, Astralis has been the best team in the world, winning trophy after trophy and being completely unstoppable at almost every event. If you’re looking for an amazing show and some very easy ways to win CS:GO bets, keep your eyes on Astralis and you won’t be disappointed. In particular, on Inferno and Nuke they’re practically unbeatable.
Expected position in the rankings table, at the end of ESL Pro League Season 9: 1.
Natus Vincere
Natus Vincere may be slightly weaker than last year but they’re still a top 3 team with a lot of potential. Just as Astralis, they are very hard to beat on their best maps and with s1mple and electronic as main carries, it’s enough for the other 3 members to have an average performance and Na’Vi will smash anyone with the exception of Astralis and a few other competitors.
For the Group Stage of ESL Pro League Season 9, we expect Na’Vi to finish in the top 4 for sure.
mousesports
You may remember the famous mousesports lineup from last season. However, this is not that lineup but a new one. Only two of the former mousesports members are still playing for the organization. Apart from ropz and chrisJ, everyone else has joined rather recently.
The most notable addition to mousesports has been karrigan, the former captain of FaZe Clan and other teams, where he proved himself to be one of the most knowledgeable captains in CS:GO. With his help, we’re confident in mousesports’ ability to regain some of its former fame and start getting top placements again.
Going into the Group Stage of ESL Pro League Season 9, mousesports has excellent chances of getting a good placement and qualifying for the Finals.
Windigo Gaming
They were a fairly unknown team until recently, when they won the CS:GO competition at WESG 2018-2019. They shocked everyone at that event so people are waiting to see what they can do at other tournaments as well.
It’s still difficult to predict what Windigo Gaming is likely to do in a strong league such as ESL Pro League Season 9, but the fact that they won an event such as WESG shows that they have a lot of talented players.
Heroic
This is a team that went through important roster changes in 2019. Supposedly, they can still play CS:GO at a fairly high level, but they will certainly struggle against most of the other opponents during ESL Pro League Season 9. It’s hard to rank them at this point but somewhere around 10th out of 16 is probably the right guess.
FaZe Clan
FaZe Clan has amazing players but unreliable leadership. Both YNk and NiKo are rather inexperienced in the roles they have to play. So when it comes to big matches, FaZe Clan is more than likely to fail. At the top of Counter-Strike, your system of play has to be outstanding in order for you to succeed. FaZe Clan is the kind of team that survives at the top simply because of their superstar players and their ability to perform well individually. But the overall gameplay is shaky.
Going into ESL Pro League Season 9, we regard FaZe Clan as one of the best 4 or 5 teams among the 16 competitors, and expect them to achieve decent results against most of their adversaries.
Ninjas in Pyjamas
We’ve seen NiP’s limits at the recent IEM Katowice Major, as well as in online matches. They play very well against most of the tier 1 teams and they dominate anyone that’s below the top 20. But when they have to play against teams from the top 6, they almost always lose.
At this competitive level, NiP should be able to hold their own and qualify for the Finals. If they fail to do that and crumble at ESL Pro League Season 9, that would be a very bad sign for them going forward. But it’s not likely to happen. The level of competition is not that high. Only 4 teams are clearly better than them so we can’t imagine NiP not qualifying for the Finals.
Fnatic
With their new roster, Fnatic hasn’t done very well on the big stage. At every important event, they struggled to achieve even mediocre results this season and they suffered unexpected eliminations. Take for instance the recent Katowice Major, where Fnatic finished 20th – 22nd out of 24. That’s a very humiliating result for a former Major champion.
Fnatic used to be the best team in the world just a few seasons ago. Now they’re not even in the top 12. And it doesn’t look like that’s going to change very soon. Their current roster is simply not capable of competing with the world’s best at the moment. Sure, KRIMZ still delivers, although not at the same level as before, but the other 4 players are average or below average in terms of current form.
It’s hard to say at this point what Fnatic is capable of and what their likely result will be at ESL Pro League Season 9, but it’s unlikely that we’ll see them qualifying for the Finals.
BIG
What a disappointment for a team that had so much potential! BIG’s roster changes haven’t paid off. Back when they had smooya on the AWP role, they were playing great Counter-Strike and proved themselves capable of getting top results. Now they’re back to square one. At the recent Major, they finished 15th – 16th, but they only started to play in the second stage of the event. So practically, they finished last!
Going into ESL Pro League Season 9, BIG has almost no chance of getting a top 8 result and moving on. It would take some big missteps from other teams in order for them to get such a high placement with their current roster.
North
North had one peak moment last season, when they managed to beat Astralis in the Grand Final of DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018. They also had a number of other decent results and top placements at smaller competitions, but then they completely vanished. However, they resurfaced recently with a very strong performance at GG.Bet Ice Challenge, where they managed to beat Natus Vincere in the Grand Final. This was a small event overall, but the fact that they beat Na’Vi shows a lot of skill on their part.
Going into ESL Pro League Season 9, North has reasonably good chances of getting a top 8 finish, but they would have to play as they used to a while ago.
