BLAST Premier: Spring Showdown started with a lot of upsets. Despite the best-of-three format, which should favor the stronger side, competitors like Team Falcons, Team Liquid, and Complexity are already out of the race after their first match.
Something is happening in CS2 these days and it’s hard to put your finger on it. It seems that a lot of underdogs are highly motivated to make a name for themselves, while some of the favorites are struggling to find a success formula despite having formidable rosters.
Just take a look at Team Falcons, who have Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, Alvaro “SunPayus” Garcia, and Emil “Magisk” Reif on the same roster, but still cannot win against a opponent like Metizport. When a team that’s not even in the top 40 can beat you in a best-of-three, that’s quite worrying.
Falcons’ Elimination
Team Falcons entered BLAST Premier: Spring Showdown with high ambitions and lots of people, myself included, were convinced that they would compete in the Semifinals against Team Spirit. The idea that they could lose so early in the tournament was unthinkable.
What’s even more depressing about this defeat is that s1mple had one of the worst performances ever on the third map of the match.
Falcons won the first map, Mirage, 13 – 9. Then they lost on Overpass quite badly, 4 – 13. And on the third map, the score was 11 – 13 largely because s1mple had a terrible performance, ending with a score of 10 – 20.
Liquid’s Elimination
Team Liquid encountered SAW in their opening match and were expected to have some problems, but certainly not to lose. SAW proved themselves in PGL Major Copenhagen European RMR A. They finished that tournament in the top eight and qualified for the Copenhagen Major. Meanwhile, Team Liquid failed to qualify for the same event.
But because of Liquid’s amazing roster, everyone liked to believe that they would triumph in this competition and start to rebuild their confidence. As it turns out, things are not as simple as they seem.
Liquid struggled on every single map. The scores were 10 – 13 on Nuke, 16 – 14 on Inferno, and 4 – 13 on Ancient. The whole roster, with the exception of Mareks “YEKINDAR” Galinskis, played reasonably well.
But SAW played even better. In particular, Rafael “arrozdoce” Wing had an excellent performance, ending with a score of 59 – 43.
Header image credit: BLAST
