What do FaZe, NAVI, Players, and FURIA all have in common?

One side of the bracket.

Say a little prayer for Entropiq and Astralis, who have the misfortune of being drawn on that half, while the other half of the bracket is a bit nicer.

Hell, the winner of fnatic vs ENCE plays vs Movistar Riders. If FaZe beat Players then they also have to beat NAVI. That’s pretty unfortunate.

Heroic and Liquid are up first, with the winner (Heroic, let’s be honest) duking it out with NIP. One of those three is a semi-finalist. Same with fnatic, ENCE, and Movistar.

Entropiq meet Astralis, with FURIA awaiting them — one of those is in the semis — while only one of FaZe, NAVI, and Players will be. That’s a hard ‘XD’.

Still - it’s more Counter-Strike for us to watch. NAVI look back to their best, and FURIA have been absolutely filthy so far. NIP look genuinely pretty scary, and we’d love Movistar to keep up this form.

If there was ever a time for Movistar to make it to a Grand Final, it’s now.

And at least we have some banger games before the Final. NAVI vs Players/FaZe in a quarter-final? FURIA vs NAVI as a potential semi-final? fnatic vs ENC- alright, never mind. But you get the point.

Tune in to this week's episode of Overtime on Inferno where your favorite hosts aizyesque and Logan Ramhap go deep on the biggest news in CS:GO:

• Why NA has some hope
• Why that hope was ripped from their cold hands
• Another coach bug scandal

Evil Geniuses are a waste of everyone’s time.

Americans barely even care about this team anymore. Nobody wants to watch them at big events, nobody wants them to win. This team is completely lifeless; and just when you thought they couldn’t disappoint again, they got 2-0’d by AGO.

F1KU dropped a 40 bomb in regulation on this lot. He’s a talented player, but that’s a ridiculous performance. He’s not doing that to any serious teams.

The kicker? If they had won, Complexity would still have had a chance to qualify for playoffs. So they let down NA one last time on their way to 0-5.

The team that billed themselves as “here to save NA CS” have very much done the opposite. The only map they won was against Complexity, for crying out loud.

Their players look bad individually, and they look worse than the sum of their parts. autimatic looks like a guy who just swapped from VALORANT, Brehze, and CeRq look like they have been bad for six months and Stewie looks like... well, Stewie2k.

But worse.

The positive thing is that - due to their terrible performances - they can now be voted out of the Louvre Agreement. They don’t seem to care about taking things seriously, so this might finally be the kick up the “North America” they needed.

It’s not just NA they’ve let down. It’s not just every team in the Louvre Agreement they’ve let down. It’s themselves. The agreement is in place to defend its own teams, and they’re still in danger of getting booted out.

It’s likely they won’t, but you can bet your North America that they’re bricking it.

They spent a whole lot of money to win one single map and go out in last, and stink the place out while doing it.

🥈 Second place is the first loser

• If you’re a G2 fan, look away. If you’re anyone else, do treat yourself to this fantastic analysis of FaZe’s IEM victory by our own aizyesque.
• Talking about talented, here’s Freya Spiers with a breakdown of the 6 man rosters.

✅  According to plan

• O PLANO got big plans. 4000 square meters of them to be exact.
• NAVI aren’t just good at shooting heads, they’re also incredible at communicating.
• EliGE could have moved to Valorant but didn’t. Be like EliGE.

🐤  Wholesome content

• There’s not a sentence that will make sense for this video. You simply have to see it.
• Give your teammates a helping hand. Toss them a grenade.