FURIA fall to imperious 3DMAX to go 0-2 - ESL Pro League S23

FURIA got manhandled by 3DMAX in the Frenchmen’s best performance in a long, long time.

3DMAX have been pretty mediocre of late, but they were superb as FURIA were below par and deserved their 2-0 win.

The change to bring in misutaaa over bodyy was critiqued (by us!), but if they can play like that more often we’re all-in on this move. misutaaa himself was brilliant in this game with 50 kills over the series, and has seemingly given 3DMAX a new level, against all odds.

For FURIA, they’ll be in the 0-2 bracket tomorrow, which was pretty much unfathomable before the start of the event, but they have been nowhere near their best so far. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is wrong, but they need to shape up.

They should, at least, win tomorrow. Right?

Are G2 secretly good?

We don’t want to worry anyone, but that’s two very convincing performances back-to-back, albeit not against the creme-de-la-creme, and they’re mounting an argument as a challenger for at least that 5th-6th best team in the world argument here at Pro League.

Well, it’s online and they’ve beaten FaZe and NAVI, but let us run with our premature narrative for a bit of fun.

NAVI are up and down, and even took G2’s map pick, but G2 limited them to 12 rounds in the next two maps with SunPayus once more showing signs of life - a prerequisite to them finally reaching their ambitions.

He was always known as a guy who struggled to AWP on T side, but he was electric on the offense on Ancient to drive G2 to an impressive series win.

MOUZ absolutely toasted Astralis on back-to-back maps to complete a 2-1 comeback with some serious vengeance in their eyes.

Astralis had the gall to win Ancient in overtime, so MOUZ taught them a swift lesson with 13-1 13-3 wins to put them back in their place. We’re still unsure where to place Astralis; they’ve now put up three impressive performances that had us thinking they were a serious threat, before putting up two absolute stinkers.

We think they might just be lacking firepower - but they’re a very cohesive unit most of the time.

MOUZ look terrifying again, but it is an online group stage. If they do this in the playoffs we’ll be on board.

And massively surprised.

Team Spirit had a bit of a wake-up call on map one as B8 continued their reign of terror with a map one win, but then donk and sh1ro decided they wanted to win, actually. It happens. Spirit smacked B8 on map three to wrap up a simple win.

We’re sick of talking about FaZe losing. nqz dropped 70 in a three map series to help paiN to an unconvincing win, though at least they pulled away cleanly on Mirage.

piriajr had a game-saving, absurd Deagle 4k on Nuke that might have otherwise led to a FaZe win; which isn’t a good look for paiN.

Legacy looked much more convincing as Brazil’s next up, as they overpowered Monte in two. It’s lovely to see arT and his absolute nonsense back at the top level, and Legacy are sneakily a horrible team to play against. latto had some extraordinary rounds in this one, and looks very much the player he was threatening to be on GODSENT some years back.