NAVI dominates, Spirit struggles, and Liquid shows promise.
The penultimate BLAST Premier event is about to come to a close. Across its four-year history, the event has thrown up countless surprises. The very first event in the series saw Complexity's juggernaut roster upset the relentless Astralis. So, let's review the group stage of the Fall Finals and see which team surprised us the most.
Group A - FaZe's Form Festers at Fall Finals
Group A was perhaps the more clear cut to predict half of the Fall Finals. NAVI is the scene's pacesetter. G2 has incredible firepower with less-than-stellar calling. FaZe can't beat a Top 5 team, come what may. Falcons, meanwhile, had cause to celebrate by just qualifying for the event. But they were clearly the worst squad in the group, if not the event.
And that's exactly how it played out. NAVI shot down the Falcons, prompting Danny "zonic" Sørensen to publicly admit changes were needed. Surprisingly, that change came in the form of Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyljev joining the team on loan from NAVI itself. Meanwhile, FaZe managed to take a map off G2 and had to thank the Falcons for allowing them to move into the playoffs. Surprising results? No. But the Fall Finals group stage was a good review of the team's forms mid-season.
Group B - Spirit's status needs a review after Fall Finals
The other group of the Fall Finals had a far mvore interesting set of results. Vitality, much like NAVI, had the Semi-Finals spot under lock and key. But behind them, Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken's Liquid battled Spirit for the #2 spot. Taking a 13-3 loss on their own map pick should've spelled the game over for Liquid. But the classic "chokers" managed to show grit and swept back the series.
Spirit then went on to face Astralis, handing the cadiaN version of that roster its first map win (13-3, no less). That sent Spirit to the playoffs but did very little to answer the questions that are quickly emerging around the roster. This team stepped into the Tier 1 light as a bonafide superteam but with incredible structure. Danil 'donk' Kryshkovets may have been a superstar, but he was properly set up by his team to charge ahead and dominate. Now, that structure has fallen by the wayside, and Donk has been hung out to dry.
The fact that this 17-year-old is somehow still dragging Spirit into every single playoff is a testament to Counter-Strike's legend of tomorrow. But Spirit, in its current form, looks out of the running for the Shanghai Major. Leonid "chopper" Vishnyakov may have denied roster changes pre-Major, but this team looks like it's waiting for that deadline to pass.
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Is Team Liquid ready for the step-up?
In the preview for Group B, this event was earmarked for Team Liquid as the time to step up. And while a win over Spirit is an incredible feather in the cap, it is coming at the time of Spirit's downfall. Their subsequent loss was the true benchmark, and in that series, we witnessed Keith "NAF" Markovic battling Vitality almost singlehandedly.
The firepower that is the key to Liquid's success relies on Twistzz and Roland's "ultimate" Tomkowiak consistently performing. But they both have added pressures to deal with. For Twistzz, the balance of IGL duties and his crosshair is one he still has to master. For ultimate, the pressure of the playoffs will take time to get used to. Luckily for Liquid, that can be fixed with time, and as long as they qualify for the Major, there should be no reason for the organization to pull the trigger on yet another rebuild.
The Grand Finals of the BLAST Premier Fall Finals kicks off at 4 p.m. CEST. Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest CS2 news and interviews live from Copenhagen.
