ECS Season 8 Finals preview

The four best teams in the world and four strong challengers will compete for $500,000 at the ECS Season 8 Finals from November 28 through December 1. Before the action starts, we bring you a breakdown of the teams and their chances in Arlington, Texas.

The ECS Season 8 Finals kick off a busy period for the top teams, as the event is followed by the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals and the BLAST Global Finals, with some other smaller international tournaments also on the horizon. With teams having little time to practice and work on their mistakes after ECS, the event will be a good indicator of where the top four really stand as we approach the final stretch of the season.

Astralis, Evil Geniuses, fnatic and Liquid are the teams most people will be looking towards, but with the questionable form of some of the big dogs, upsets could be on the cards.

The recent update, which changed the prices of the SG 553, the FAMAS and the Galil, as well as the spraying inaccuracy of the two budget rifles, will add additional variances to the event. Teams who have spent the last week on the road, such as MIBR, Evil Geniuses and AVANGAR, will be a bit behind on the meta due to limited practice, while Vertigo-friendly teams will have to risk going into untested waters if they want to play it after yet another update to the map.

The groups look as follows:

ECS Season 8 will take place over four days, with the first two reserved for a GSL group stage (BO1 opening match, rest BO3), followed by a single-elimination BO3 playoff bracket. The teams were split into two groups using a team-selection method, with the two best North American squads ending up in Group A and the two best European ones in Group B.

Group A

Is it time to start worrying about Evil Geniuses? Back-to-back 5-6th placings at two events in China spell trouble, especially the result at the CS:GO Asia Championships, where the North American team were an overwhelming favorite for the title and ended up knocked out by MIBR and mousesports.

Their issues seem to be directly tied to the performances of their main star, Vincent "⁠Brehze⁠" Cayonte. The 21-year-old, touted as a top 5 player of the year, was in the red at all three events where Evil Geniuses have flopped since the break: DreamHack Masters Malmö, IEM Beijing, and CS:GO Asia Championships. The most recent event was especially poor, as his 0.91 rating was the worst he scored since DreamHack Masters Stockholm in 2018.

With so much traveling and all those back-to-back events, there hasn't been much time for Evil Geniuses to recover or reinvent themselves ahead of the ECS Season 8 Finals, and there won't be much more moving forward, as Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz's charges will be playing at the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals within 48 hours of ECS concluding. That makes doing well at this event crucial for the team as they try to stop the negative spiral.

Despite the issues on the surface, Evil Geniuses have the pedigree to do well, with Ethan "⁠Ethan⁠" Arnold and Tsvetelin "⁠CeRq⁠" Dimitrov still performing admirably, but no team in their group will give them an easy win or gift them a much-needed playoff spot - they will have to show up in better form and earn it.

Playing significantly fewer events than Evil Geniuses but without having much to show for it is Liquid. The team's fall from the top following the player break is already well documented, but their real struggles — early exits DreamHack Masters Malmö and BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen — are fairly recent.

Looking at the world rankings, Liquid are hanging on to their top-four spot largely thanks to the Major and ESL One New York playoff finishes, but we are now nearing two months since the North American squad had a respectable placing. Skipping IEM Beijing and StarSeries i-League Season 8 has also cost them in that regard, but perhaps that was a sacrifice they were comfortable doing in order to go for a strong finish to the year at the finals of ECS, Pro League and BLAST Pro Series.

Considering that none of the teams in their group currently look like worldbeaters and that Liquid are coming off an eventless period and a bootcamp, there should be no excuses for Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella's side not making it out of the groups here and contesting for the title on home soil. Making up some ground on Evil Geniuses and potentially taking over the banner of the best team in North America before the end of the year is still feasible, but it has to start this week in Texas.

A second place at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen and wins over BIG and G2 at EPL, the latter being a consequence of Nicolas "⁠Plopski⁠" Gonzalez Zamora's inspired performance (88-46 K-D, 1.54 rating), gave NIP and their fans some reasons to be optimistic heading into ECS Season 8 Finals.

After a slow start with the Ninjas, Plopski has started to show why he was offered a spot in this team, but his improvement seems to have come at the expense of Fredrik "⁠REZ⁠" Sterner's impact. The recent role changes have affected the 21-year-old, who has been the worst-performing player in the squad.

The second driving force of the team remains Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg, who, when he turns up, often takes NIP over the line. How long will he be doing that, though, remains to be seen, as rumors have been circulating about him leaving to join Dignitas alongside other former NiP members. This piece of news could also destabilize the team ahead of ECS, where they will need everyone to be on point if they wish to overcome two of Liquid, Evil Geniuses and AVANGAR and get a playoff spot.

Another team that only had a short breather since competing at the CS:GO Asia Championships is AVANGAR. The Kazakh side peaked in September, finishing second at the StarLadder Major Berlin and winning BLAST Pro Series Moscow, after which they skyrocketed to third in the world rankings.

As expected, AVANGAR have slowly dropped down since, with placings such as 3rd-4th at DreamHack Open Rotterdam and 9th-12th at StarSeries i-League Season 8 showing that they aren't an elite squad that can hang with the best, at least not yet. At the CS:GO Asia Championship, they survived the first two days while using a stand-in, only to lose to MIBR in the quarter-finals in a fashion that Alexey "⁠qikert⁠" Golubev described as a "throw" and left him speechless.

Fixing those mistakes in a limited timeframe isn't an easy task for AVANGAR, but should they be able to do it, they do have enough teamplay and firepower in players like Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali, Timur "⁠buster⁠" Tulepov, and qikert to make this group quite complicated for the favorites, especially if they steal the win in the opening BO1 against Evil Geniuses.

Group B

Making the most out of the situation at hand — Liquid falling off and Evil Geniuses struggling to find consistency — is Astralis, who won the Major, grabbed a couple of high placings, and pulled in front with a dominant victory at IEM Beijing, where they lifted the trophy after a flawless run. While their position at the top of the rankings is not yet safe, they are just a couple of good showings away from finishing the year the way they started it - as the best team in the world.

For Astralis, the ECS Finals is the first in the series of three Big events, with their tournament schedule the same as Liquid's. The Danes have been known for scheduling appropriately and pacing themselves really well throughout individual events, so it will be interesting to see how they approach the overbooked month ahead of them.

Thankfully for the Danes, their group is more straightforward than Group A, which should see them advance even if they have a slow start. However, the playoffs are where it gets interesting, particularly if they meet Evil Geniuses, who have had their number in 2019.

While Astralis have been consistent (aside from one poor day at BLAST Copenhagen) and have had the best recent result of the top four teams at the event (IEM Beijing), it is important to remember that the Danes haven't been nearly as dominant this year as in 2018, and that losing to any of the big teams at ECS Season 8 Finals is certainly within the realms of possibility.

Champions at DreamHack Masters Malmö and runners-up at StarSeries i-League Season 8, fnatic surpassed expectations massively at their first two events with Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim and Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist on the roster. The Swedes also qualified for the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals despite being forced to use a stand-in, outdoing Vitality with Rasmus "⁠kreaz⁠" Johansson filling the gaps.

Was all of this just a honeymoon period? If it wasn't, making it to the playoffs of ECS Season 8 Finals should be a piece of cake, even though Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson's health issues may have limited fnatic's practice ahead of this event.

If the 25-year-old doesn't play up to his full potential right away, an in-form Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin and a reinvigorated Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell on the AWP should be a good enough base for fnatic to pick up victories, especially with flusha being there to clutch and chip in with crucial mid-round calls. On an individual level, Golden has been looking better than he did in his first stint with fnatic, providing quite a lot of impact for an in-game leader. Can fnatic stay a consistent top-four team or maybe even push further? ECS will give us some insight into that.

Tough times continue for MIBR, who are still lingering on the edge of the top 10 despite the roster change that saw the shunned star Vito "⁠kNgV-⁠" Giuseppe welcomed back into the Immortals Gaming Club fold. The 27-year-old started off his stint in MIBR as the main AWPer, but that has changed recently, as the priority on the Big Green has shifted back to Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo.

At the CS:GO Asia Championships, where MIBR finished 3rd-4th and beat Evil Geniuses, the role change resulted in FalleN being the best-rated player on the team, while kNgV- slipped to the bottom and recorded his second-worst event with MIBR. It is hard to determine if putting kNgV- on a more aggressive rifling duty (he recorded the highest number of opening duels for the team) actually helped the team perform better, or if their opponents, namely Evil Geniuses, have simply fallen off in form.

Whatever the case is, MIBR must at least handle Sharks and put up a solid fight against the two big names in the group if they want to convince anyone that this roster has the potential to be a tournament contender in the future. Two years have passed since FalleN last lifted a Big event trophy (ESL Pro League Finals S6), and there is a lot of reasons for management and fans to be concerned. The team can only hope that this is where things will finally take a turn for the better.

Competing in Europe for periods of time and managing an upset over North at ESL Pro League Finals Season 8 last year gave Sharks some international exposure, but the team was unable to really break through and make their mark in the Old Continent. The lineup that came together in March 2018 peaked by placing 3rd-4th at the PLG Grand Slam at the end of 2018, but big changes were made only after an unsuccessful Minor run in Berlin.

Sharks parted ways with two players, including veteran Renato "⁠nak⁠" Nakano, moved the team to North America and finally added two foreigners: Ignacio "⁠meyern⁠" Meyer (featured in our "One for the future" series) and Luca "⁠Luken⁠" Nadotti. The promising Argentinian duo has adapted to the Brazilian-Portuguese communication swiftly, and, together with Jhonatan "⁠jnt⁠" Silva, Raphael "⁠exit⁠" Lacerda, and Leonardo "⁠leo_drk⁠" Oliveira, has started bringing Sharks some big wins.

In the process of qualifying for the ECS and EPL Finals, Sharks beat Liquid and Cloud9 online, and overcame opposition from Latin America. Sharks have been fairly inactive since then, which is reflected in their current ranking, but the ECS Season 8 Finals will be a good test for the individually sharp players to show their potential on LAN in a group that could not get much harder.