Remember all the hype for fnatic last year? Or Astralis with k0nfig and blameF?

Forget all that. Funspark ULTI has thrown some curveballs into the mix and tossed all of our preconceptions in the bin.

fnatic went out last with Complexity - admittedly, the latter having a player playing from a different continent - and Astralis went out in 5-6th, losing to everyone’s favourite underdog, Entropiq.

But we’ve spoken way too much about Astralis recently, so we thought we’d talk about Entropiq. Despite losing 2-1 to finalists Gambit earlier on, they’ve slayed two Danes in the lower bracket (ECSTATIC, in the end, twice, as they beat them to open up the event) and now are one game from the final.

Though El1an is the de facto superstar on the team, what makes them so intriguing is that who you think is their best player seems to depend on when you catch them. NickelBack went berserk against Astralis, Lack1 does all the time, and Krad and Forester are capable of genius too.

But in the third map against Astralis, man. That was when their superstar stood tall, picking up 37 kills and one of the filthiest AWP aces we’ve seen in a while. We like you guys; don’t go to the B site tomorrow.

They’re now facing BIG for another shot at Gambit - for both of them. Gambit 2-0’d BIG in an incredibly dominant fashion in the Upper Bracket final, but BIG outside of that have been solid so far with faveN.

Luckily for you guys, this tournament ends on a Monday for some reason; so if it’s midday when you’re reading this in Europe, or early morning in the USA, open up Twitch and watch some CS.

If it’s later than that, then pretend we just told you who won. What a game that was!

You know how David Moyes did an amazing job at Everton, and turned an okay team into a genuinely good one, but then when he moved to a team with much better players, he looked a lot worse?

Anyway, that was a completely unprompted tangent. Aleksib has joined G2 (with XTQZZZ) after a pretty mixed spell at OG, following a successful period in charge of ENCE.

coughs

Look, we’ve enjoyed poking fun at OG, and Aleksi, for a while now. There’s something amusing about teams and players who are always the bridesmaid but never the bride. Something something, Tottenham Hotspur.

But if Aleksi is ever going to be the bride, then G2 must be his groom. This is an uber-stacked team with genuine superstar talent and one of the most exciting teenagers the CS world has ever seen, and now the pressure is on him to win tournaments.

That’s a pressure that Aleksi had a little bit of at OG, but never succeeded. Now, there are no excuses.  If he doesn’t win with this team, there’ll be a lot of humble pie dished up for his many fans.

And if he does, perhaps it will be us. Humble pie is really good at this time of the year.

While OG lost one leader, they picked up another. In a rare but always fun swap deal, nexa was confirmed to be going their way.

Not much should change, really. They’ve lost an IGL who hasn’t won tournaments with some great players, and picked up... an IGL who hasn’t won tournaments with great players.

That’s if nexa even wants to IGL any more; maybe having a break from NiKo might make you want to pick it up again. OG become more of a threat firepower-wise but perhaps a little less tactically deep.

G2, well, become one of the most hyped rosters of all time. Let’s put on a show.

On Saturday, HLTV held an award show to announce their top three players of the year, along with the team of the year.

To the surprise of no one who watched any tier 1 tournament last year, s1mple and Natus Vincere claimed top honors. s1mple had eight MVP awards on a team that won nearly every major tournament they attended, including a flawless run at the only Major last year.

According to HLTV, he ended the year with:

• 1.35 average
• 88.2 ADR
• A multi-kill in over 20% of rounds played

They even went on to compare him to the GOAT:

An argument can even be made that this was the strongest year anyone has ever had in the history of the game...this was likely the most convincing #1 placing in Top 20 history, surpassing Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund's dominant year 2013.

The bigger question came one rung lower, where NiKo and ZywOo faced off for second place in the rankings.

Niko ended up improving on his #4 ranking from last year with third place while ZywOo claimed second, just behind s1mple. It was a strong year for both players, with NiKo’s G2 getting second place at the major, second place at IEM Cologne and a string of 3rd-4ths over the spring. But it wasn’t enough to beat ZywOo even as Vitality struggled through much of the year.

Vitality’s only real win of the year came late, with a victory at IEM Winter over the likes of NIP and G2, but ZywOo himself was incredibly good throughout the year. He ended 2021 with a 1.29 rating, below s1mple but above NiKo’s 1.21.

With an MVP from IEM Winter and eight EVP awards, ZywOo put up an impressive campaign that would only have been bolstered by the kind of team support s1mple finally got last year.

CS:GO is s1mple’s game right now. Everyone else is just living in his world.

• birdfromsky didn’t win against Entropiq, but he did win on Twitter. Cry IS free.
• At age 8, ZywOo went to LAN with his granny and a SteelSeries Siberia V2. No, this is actually true.
• The Rise and Fall of ENCE sounds way more pompous than it actually is. But it’s 15 minutes of good edits and well worth your time.
• If you got the hots for Twistzz, and let’s be honest who doesn’t, then this feature by Dexerto is right up your alley. No hair-routine, but spilled beans from his time in Liquid. Alas.
• There is no perfect sensitivity apparently.
• 9z is losing try to 00Nation, but have added Luken and dav1d to replace him, with IGL B1T potentially on the move to MIBR.
• fy_iceworld > fy_pool_day anytime: