The lowdown on every team in Stage One - ESL Pro League

While it’s a shame that such a prestigious event is online for the first two stages, it’s always a good time at ESL Pro League.

The juxtaposition of the importance of the games and the frivolity of the casting makes for an interesting dynamic not dissimilar to the much-loved Beyond the Summit events, though the online portion of the event does undercut it a little.

Make no mistake, though, these games matter to lots of teams here. Stage one begins tomorrow on Monday, and everyone here has something to prove.

The big fish

PARIVISION come into this as favourites for the 3-0 given recent results. Dealing with that pressure is going to be new for some of these guys, but if they keep doing what they’re doing, they’ll be grand.

G2 are perennial under-achievers and impressively slapstick in the big moments, but they should be far too good for the relative riff-raff here. Astralis have been solid but unspectacular so far, and that should be more than enough.

Team Liquid, though, who knows. They’re an extremely bipolar team, though recently they’ve been veering more towards Hyde than Jekyll, and we wouldn’t be surprised at either a 3-0 or a 2-3. They’re still a big fish here despite being lower ranked than quite a few of the other teams on VRS purely on name value, but names don’t matter when they’re greyed out on the scoreboard.

They truly have a lot to prove, and we need to see something far more convincing here.

The next up

FUT are improving faster than FaZe are declining (cheap shot), and we’d be lying if we said we weren’t incredibly interested in what they are going to get up to here. In theory they should breeze through as one of the best teams here, but with it being online and them still being young and maybe a bit inconsistent, we’re not ready to lock them in just yet.

3DMAX have misutaaa now, which makes them a team to watch here. They’ve been a little stale and a change was much-needed, but nobody but them is convinced that misutaaa is the change they needed. paiN are probably going to be fine, though we’re not sure their ceiling is much higher than this, while HEROIC we have concerns about.

They’re in this category because they tend to get to big events a lot, but their results have been rough with their makeshift AWPer situation.

The wildcards

NRG are #17 on the VRS rankings, so maybe it’s a bit harsh to have them here, but they don’t truly feel better than the eight teams above them, save maybe HEROIC. They’ve picked up more wins than expected essentially every time they’ve been at a big event, and oSee has made a pretty big case for why he should probably be back in tier one a couple of times as well. They’re in with a pretty solid shot at a top eight at this stage.

NIP are another two-faced team, as they’ve always been (at least since 2015 or so). A team with bags of ability and, on paper, a team that should be a comfortable top 15 team (in our humble opinion!), and yet an uncontrollable bozo gene that seems to stop them in increasingly strange ways. cairne, xKacpersky and r1nkle is an explosive trio that can go toe-to-toe with anyone on their day, but their days rarely seem to sync up.

Passion UA are probably the most interesting team here, and it’s a shame this isn’t on LAN. They’ve now got their full roster with a player from every continent, and we’re super excited to see it, but with the caveat that it’s not a LAN yet. Another team with aspirations of top eight, and very little reason they can’t make it, Passion UA should be well in the mix and we think their ceiling might well be even higher.

Legacy round out this section and honestly, bar that purple patch last year, we’ve seen little of late to suggest they can surprise too much. Mind you, we thought that before the purple patch, too.

The banana skins

M80 are perhaps unfortunate to find themselves in the lowest category here, but that’s why it’s titled to emphasise that these teams are definitely capable of tripping you up. M80 have consistently found ways to have impact when travelling around the world against good teams, and are in no way pushovers.

Monte are an eyebrow-raising 19th in the world on VRS, though this does feel like a false position somewhat. This is a strange roster when you first look at it, but the more you think about it the more it starts to make sense. There is far more experience of top tier play than you’d expect of a team like this, and personally we’re here for the Rainwaker redemption arc.

Gaimin Gladiators aren’t much of a threat to qualify, but we wouldn’t want to be playing against HEN1 and felps either. An on-form HEN1 is still terrifying, albeit it’s been a while since we’ve seen it.

Semper Fi, at #124, are far and away the lowest ranked team at the event and do unfortunately look like whipping boys. We’d love to get proven wrong, but we don’t think we will.