S1mple and his boys put on a clinic in their first week of action in EPL, rushing to a second place in the standings and delivering an interesting encounter against their foes from Astralis. BIG is perhaps the biggest surprise so far, as they have been able to carry their strong initial momentum deep into the season, while the same certainly doesn’t hold true for NiP’s boys – no momentum far and wide…
Na’Vi burst onto the Pro League playing field like a Ukrainian beast past week, losing only four maps out of 20 played for a total of 47 points and second place in the standings. It was important for Zeus & Co. to re-establish dominance over their EU adversaries after an underwhelming showing at ESL One New York. Na’Vi did just that by finishing off Ex-Space Soldiers, NiP, FaZe, Fnatic, Heroic and Windigo without losing a map, while tying their series against mousesports, North, G2 and Astralis in the battle of giants.
The world’s two best teams met on overpass first and on dust2 second. The first map was a quicky, which ended 16-4 in favour of Astralis. Dust2 looked like another Danish victory when dev1ce’s boys claimed a 15-11 lead with four consecutive map points. But with S1mple’s help, who finally had a great showing against Astralis and dropped 32 frags, Na’Vi clawed their way back into it, before closing it out in OT. This may seem like just an insignificant online map victory, but the Ukrainians will collect confidence for future fights against their Danish kryptonite wherever they can.
Go BIG or go HOME
BIG is going big, no doubt, and it seems like Germans finally have an almost all German team again that can do real damage and under the right circumstances even contend for titles. With 44 points after 22 matches and a third rank, gob b’s boys are almost certainly going to qualify for the finals in Odense. The Berlin based team played a very successful MD2, splitting the majority of their series, with two great sweeps against mousesports and Windigo. Especially exciting to see is tiziaN’s development. The young rifler joined BIG in February this year, and after initial difficulties, he now shows great individual form and a promise of even greater things to come.
Sleepy Ninjas?
We haven’t seen much from NiP this season, and what we have seen has been underwhelming. It’s time to wear gym shorts instead of those pyjamas that have clearly made the Ninjas fall asleep. NiP have only collected 12 points in 16 matches with a round differential of -74 and the 13th rank in the standings. The playoffs are almost unreachable at this point, but they can still avoid relegation if they manage to wake up in time.
ESL Pro League Season 8 returns next week on Tuesday!
Tune into ESL CS:GO’s Facebook channel to watch your favorite teams battle for a spot at the offline finals in Odense. If you want to watch the season finals, you can purchase tickets here.
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Season 8 of the ESL Pro League is brought to you by Intel, the City of Odense, Nvidia, Legion by Lenovo, Logitech, paysafecard, xfinity, MDL and YouTube.
