Aizyesque's ESL Pro League Day 2 Recap
After an interesting day 1 to say the least, the EPL finals stepped up the heat for the second day!
In the opening match, North bombed out of ESL Pro League in their home country with an embarrassing 2-0 defeat to ATK. Despite the best efforts of… well, honestly, nobody looked good for North. Nicklas ‘gade’ Gade topfragged for the Danes, but you’d be hard pushed to say he was playing particularly well, at least until the end of Vertigo. Ian ‘motm’ Hardy and Aran ‘Sonic’ Groesbeek both put in monster performances, and on another day would maybe be getting a ton of plaudits, but with the general weariness that surrounds North, it’s seen as much more of a failure on their part.
The game was already pretty much over before Sonic stood in a fire and nailed three nails in North’s coffin with his USP-S, but it’s still quite depressing to watch a team so abject on a B rush.
In the other opening game of the day, Renegades got their first win since buying the Grayhound roster. They dished out some punishment to Sharks, despite losing the first map - Dust 2 - thanks to some heroics from Luca ‘Luken’ Nadotti. It was Renegades’ pick too - leaving them with their backs to the wall. When the pressure is on, you need your big personalities to stand up strong, and there are few bigger than Ollie ‘DickStacy’ Tierney. The infamous Aussie bagged himself 53 kills in three maps to carry the floundering Boys over the line.
Sharks will join Heroic, North and TYLOO in the 13-16th places at Pro League, and with rumours that their star Ignacio ‘meyern’ Meyer may be wanted elsewhere, it may be a very disappointing week for the budding South Americans.
Astralis survived a massive scare - not only for themselves, but also for the whole of Denmark, after Heroic and North’s performances - after fighting back against three series points to take G2 to overtime on map two. After Andreas ‘Xyp9x’ Højsleth clutched a seemingly impossible 1v3 in overtime, it always felt like Astralis were going to run away with it.
After map one, though, G2 looked in control, mainly thanks to the absolute clinic provided by Audric ‘JaCKz’ Jug, who exterminated 33 Danes by himself on Dust 2 to put G2 on his back. Kenny ‘kennyS’ Schmitt provided the auxiliary ammunition for G2, but unlike his counterpart, carried this through the whole game.
The sniper ended the game on 78 kills, 10 more than anyone on Astralis, but realistically nobody was going to stop a raging Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen from winning map 3. The entry fragger cleaned up with 26 kills and 111.3 ADR to steal the show on map three and send the French/Serbian side to the lower bracket.
The new moustache-less Sean ‘Gratisfaction’ Kaiwai was apparently being held back by his facial hair - he dismantled a lacklustre FaZe Clan who still don’t have a proper IGL - and it showed, not least in Marcelo ‘coldzera’ David’s performance. Though he is the only twice-named HLTV #1 player in CSGO, he got outclassed by Aaron ‘AZR’ Ward and Gratisfaction. Not a good look for the Brazilian, who already lost to his old team, MiBR, earlier in the tournament.
Click to enlargeLiquid took down mousesports in a third map, 30 round classic to set up an upper bracket clash with Astralis - again. You have to be seriously good to muscle past Özgür ‘woxic’ Eker on Dust 2, but thankfully for American fans, Liquid are. Jetlag wasn’t enough to stop Jonathan ‘ELiGE’ Jablonowski, who dropped 63 over the three maps, including 26 on the final map. Estonian wunderkind Robin ‘ropz’ Kool couldn’t have done much more in his endeavours to carry an otherwise lethargic mouz, as he went positive on all three maps - even the 16-5 loss on Nuke. He ended with 67 frags in 79 rounds total, and top fragged the lobby, but ended up losing 1-2 and dropping down to play Renegades in the opening game of tomorrow.
fnatic beat MiBR 2-1, but the biggest story of the game was Freddie ‘KRIMZ’ Johansson. He broke the record for the most kills in regulation on a single map, as he destroyed MiBR with 44 kills on the second map - Dust 2 - and ending on 47 after overtime. Yes, it went to overtime, somehow.
KRIMZ didn’t do a whole lot on the other two maps, and ended the series with 71 kills, with just 12 kills on the other two maps, but thankfully for him, the young blood of Ludvig ‘Brollan’ Brolin obliterated the Brazilians with 34 kills and well over 100 ADR on Vertigo.
Tomorrow starts with Renegades vs mousesports and ATK vs G2. ATK were the giant killers in today’s game, but G2 looked a lot more solid than a weak North team. NaVi take on EG in an incredibly exciting game, while 100T clash with Swedes fnatic. Astralis take on Liquid in a classic rivalry late on, with the lower bracket final also starting at the same time.
Image Credits - ESL