Обзор второго игрового дня ESL One Cologne 2019

The second day of ESL One Cologne 2019 has brought a few surprises to those who have been mistakenly overconfident about their conclusions regarding the leaders of the event. Many teams have already left the tournament, and the rest are still fighting to advance to Playoffs and earn a meaningful place.

A few teams who were considered to be among the favourites couldn’t manage to fight through the Group stage. Let’s discuss the latest drama.

A farewell to MIBR and ENCE

The match between MIBR and BIG was pretty unexpected and unpredictable. The Brazilians have long suffered from the worsened state, but no one expected that the team led by Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo could lose to the Germans given the rich expertise and the presence of experienced and skilled players in the line-up of MIBR.

Both teams greatly played through the first two maps. BIG won de_dust2 with 16:11 score while the Brazilians showcased an exceptionally good CS on de_overpass with 16:7 score.

The issues appeared on the third map – de_train. MIBR were confidently winning the first rounds, and they had 12 points as defenders by the end of the first half of the game. After switching to the attack, the team suddenly lost its victorious pace. In response, the Germans started marching towards a glorious comeback. BIG easily took 15 points, and just a sheer miracle helped FalleN to reach the overtime rounds. Unfortunately, it didn’t help much, and the Europeans eventually took the victory with the final 19:16 score. MIBR should be on their way home now.

Another failure was faced by one of the major favourites of the tournament – ENCE eSports. Everyone was optimistic for them given the previous success of the team, but something prevented them from meeting expectations as they lost to Team Vitality. Perhaps, the reason behind this is their lack of experience to keep stability in the long-term. Whatever the case, the Frenchmen were fairly confident and strong at the beginning. Nathan Schmitt’s team looked solid during the whole three maps, and they even performed greatly on Nuke, which was won by ENCE.

Vitality was doing exceptionally great, and the best performance was made by Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut. As a result, ENCE went home after the defining loss.

A failure by FaZe Clan

The transfer politics by FaZe has deserved rather controversial feedback and criticism before the tournament. The audience and the analysts were disappointed with the decision to kick out Dauren “AdreN” Kystaubayev and to replace him with the 32-year-old veteran Filip “NEO” Kubski. The expertise and experience play a great role, there’s no doubt, but very few older players are able to compete with young and vigorous athletes – not to mention that the reaction time at NEO’s age is far from perfect. ESL One Cologne has clearly shown that FaZe made a great mistake with the reshuffle decision. Filip wasn’t able to bring himself to a worthy state, which resulted in him occupying the last place in the team’s stats with 0,61 K/D ratio.

The team looked like the crew wasn’t prepared for the game against mousesports. FaZe was able to bring the first map to overtime rounds only to lose afterwards with 15:19 score. The second map was even more pathetic, and FaZe could win just eight rounds instead of fifteen. With a shameful 0:2 score, the team left the tournament.

There also was a funny moment with Woxic and VAC. Obviously, there were no cheats, but the chat was excited.

Astralis is doing okay

Looks like the whole world was worried about Astralis. The Danes have hit a rather predictable, yet regrettable decline in their recent performance after they have been dominating for the past few years. The team dropped down to the fourth position of HLTV ranking, which led to speculations that Astralis “is done.” Luckily, it’s not the case, although we can’t even say that the match against fnatic is worth any attention. The reason is simple – Astralis literally destroyed their opponents, and the Swedes weren’t able to fight back at all. Astralis lost just a single round on de_train, and eight more on the second map. As a result, fnatic can leave the tournament if they won’t be able to stand up against Team Vitality in their next game.

Natus Vincere FTW

The unconvincing plays against mousesports and a subsequent loss to Liquid because of silly overconfidence were the reasons why everyone was sure that Na’Vi was on its way to leave the tournament. The team caused a wave of criticism, and they needed all the efforts to perform against FURIA at their peak state – otherwise, the road to the finals would have been lost.

Luckily, the Russian-Ukrainian team had no troubles defeating the Brazilians. The game wasn’t that much admirable as FURIA had nothing to counter Na’Vi, and Denis “electronic” Sharipov ended the match with 45/32 K/D ratio. FURIA is going home after a loss with 0:2 score while Na’Vi has another match against mousesports.

The NiP’s guide on dominating

The Swedes from NiP surprised the global community with news regarding the future retirement of Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund who’s going to take a different role in the organization. Interestingly, it turned out that CS veteran isn’t planning to do so and wants to continue performing as an esports player. Besides, there’ve been some recent minor reshuffles in the team, and Ninjas were joined by young player Plopski. The news led to low expectations from the team’s performance at the tournament, but the Swedes unexpectedly decided to advance for Playoffs – and they are good at it.

NiP literally beat the Danes from Heroic up. The first map, Overpass, was finished with 16:5 score in the favour of NiP while the second one, Inferno, brought them a victory with 16:10 score. The Swedes performed masterful Pistol Rounds, and Get_RiGhT decided to remind everyone that he’s still capable of playing at a high level. The veteran ended the match with 1,31 K/D/ ratio.

Don’t forget to follow us on social media to get the latest news and take part in the giveaways: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.