ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals is the epic LAN event that concludes the online tournament with the same name. A total of 16 teams from all over the world will attend the competition and in this article we will offer you an analysis of some of the best among them.
ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals is scheduled to take place in Montpellier, France between June 18th – 23rd. The prize pool of the event is impressive and turns it almost into a Major: $750.000.
So far, half of the 16 participants have been decided. The other half are still competing in the regional qualifiers. Previously we took a look at the ESL Pro League Europe Groups as well the North America ESL Pro League Groups.
ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals Team Analysis
These are some of the most important teams that you should watch during ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals. All of them are serious competitors and the first four have a real shot at winning the title.
mousesports
This team has reached a point of relative stability with their new roster. One and a half months into the process of forging a new identity, karrigan and his squad are already giving impressive signs of strength. In the first round of ESL Pro League Season 9 (Europe), mousesports easily won group A with a round handicap of +45. Three matches, three victories. Against OpTic Gaming, North and ex-Space Soldiers.
In the last five weeks, mousesports climbed 30 positions in the global rankings and is now occupying the 21st place. This is a lineup with a lot of potential. In the past, karrigan managed to bring similar rosters from the depths of tier one mediocrity to the summit of Grand Finals and tournament titles. Given his teammates’ level of skill, he has plenty of potential to work with.
We regard mousesports as one of the most underrated teams of the moment and we look forward to better and better results from their part. The first test will be at IEM Sydney, where they will play against BIG in their first of group A.
The Mice To Make It Out Of Groups
The roster of mousesports is currently formed from five players, two of which are already veterans on this team and used to play in that famous lineup that won important trophies back in 2017-2018. These players are ropz and chrisJ. The third member is karrigan but who are the remaining two people that complete the squad?
The first one is woxic, a former HellRaisers player, and the second one is frozen. This second player is probably the most inexperienced member of the team. He’s just 16 and has very little experience at this level of Counter-Strike. In spite of this, the team can definitely succeed under karrigan’s leadership.
Going into ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals, we expect mousesports to finish anywhere around 5th – 8th. They have excellent chances of getting into the Playoffs, but they do depend on what opponents they need to beat to get there. At this point, mousesports is still vulnerable against the likes of FaZe Clan, Astralis, Team Liquid and a few others. Each group offers three tickets for the Playoffs, so the seeding will be crucial.
FaZe Clan
FaZe Clan faced a lot of challenges after changing their coach and captain. Both of them were very experienced CS:GO professionals that weren’t easy to replace. RobbaN, the coach, got replaced by YNk, the famous former CS:GO analyst and MIBR coach, while karrigan, the IGL, got replaced by AdreN, who is currently playing in various support positions. The team’s current IGL is NiKo.
FaZe Clan needed several months to adapt and forge a solid strategy in their new formula. Initially they were quite unsuccessful, at least by their standards, and finished 5th – 6th at iBUYPOWER Masters IV. But then they won a rather insignificant event, ELEAGUE CS:GO Invitational 2019, plunging immediately after the title win into mediocrity. They placed 5th – 8th at IEM Katowice Major 2019, 5th at BLAST Pro Series Sao Paulo 2019, and 9th – 11th at StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 7.
There Is Big Potential For FaZe
All of these results were poor when you consider the fact that FaZe Clan used to constantly be in the top four at big events under karrigan. However, at the latest BPS event, FaZe managed to achieve something seemingly impossible: they won the title at a tournament that had the best teams in the world in attendance. And not only that, but they defeated the three prime evils of CS:GO: Astralis, Natus Vincere and Team Liquid. They also drew against MIBR along the way.
This journey clearly showed that FaZe Clan has reached a new level of teamwork and mastery with the new roster and is now officially one of the most important teams to watch at any event.
Going into ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals, we expect FaZe Clan to get a top four result. Prior to this tournament we’ll also get a chance to see them play at a few others. If you follow their performances, you’ll probably get a better idea of what they’re capable of. In principle, they should get stronger and stronger from here, but there’s still a chance that they may regress again after that formidable win at BLAST Pro Series. Nevertheless, this is a Playoffs team for sure. Anything below a 5th – 6th place result would be a huge disappointment.
Team Liquid
Team Liquid is doing the same thing they did last season. More precisely, they are consistently playing well and getting Grand Finals participations. Even though they aren’t winning all of them, the fact that they can get so far so often is a sure sign that whatever Liquid is doing, works like a charm on the current competitive scene.
All of this leads to questions: are the other competitors not studying them close enough, being more worried about lesser teams that are easier to beat? In other words, are they forfeiting the match and telling themselves “if we encounter these guys, we’ll lose anyway, so let’s prepare more rigorously for the other opponents”? Or is it just the fact that Liquid can play so well that even though they may be predictable, they’re still almost impossible to stop?
In 2019 and with their new roster, Team Liquid has already played in three Grand Finals, winning one of them. One of them was against Astralis at iBUYPOWER Masters IV, which they won. The other two were against Astralis and FaZe Clan respectively, at BLAST Pro Series events. They lost both of them.
TL Tops The Charts At ESL Pro League Season 9 North America Group B
In the regional qualifiers for ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals, Team Liquid easily won group B (in North America) with three consecutive wins and a round handicap of +68. That’s an absolutely off the charts performance. The other three opponents, Ghost Gaming, compLexity Gaming and Lazarus Esports didn’t know what hit them.
Only coL managed to win a map but then lost the other two by a country mile: 2 – 16 and 3 – 16. This was hardly a battle. More than anything, it felt like Liquid didn’t really prepare for that match. They played so randomly and bizarre on that first map (Cache) that people started to wonder what’s going on. But then immediately, NAF and his squad woke up and blasted compLexity out of the server.
Going into ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals, we expect at least a top four result from the NA squad. In all likelihood, this will be one of the two Grand Finalists of the event.
