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It’s coming up to Christmas, and we’re giving you an early gift, with important stories on: Why ESL might be more powerful than Poland, Astralis laugh thread and who might replace the outgoing interz.
Not sure if you’ve heard, but Russians are largely personae non gratae right now. We can’t figure out why.
Certainly for the Polish government, who have previous with invasive regimes, apparently, have banned Russians from entering the country — which is a large issue given IEM Katowice is in Poland.
We’ve got all the facts today.
ESL aren’t more powerful than the Polish government, as you might have initially thought, but they have confirmed that the Russian players will be fine to go to Kato. Not because they’ve tricked the Polish government, but because the Russian players are already in the Schengen area.
We know, it’s a boring answer. We thought ESL might be like the Stonecutters from that Simpsons episode, but it turns out that the rules just allow for it.
At least we get the Russian players in Poland. It wouldn’t feel like a top event without… chopper.
This is particularly important for two reasons; one, that one of the invited teams already is Outsiders, with quite a few more CIS teams expected, and two, one of ESL’s big sponsors, 1XBET, are based in Russia. 1XBET probably wouldn’t be particularly happy without any Russian players.
Still, it’s bad news for Heroic, who can’t win events when Outsiders are there, and ZywOo, who can’t be the best player at the event if s1mple is there. Or Jame. Or sh1ro. Or…
We’ll say it: we were wrong.
In a previous edition, we speculated that dev1ce wasn’t ready yet, but he’s come out and shown that he is still the devve of old.
So, we’d like to extend our apologies… to absolutely no one.
Because despite dev1ce netting 69 kills (nice) across 2 maps versus HEET, the Danes still lost and were eliminated from CCT North Europe Series 2. Is France north-European now?
Astralis did still beat country rivals Tricked in their first match, where blameF and dev1ce combined for 109 kills. Which was enough to avoid getting tricked by, well, Tricked.
With that duo performing, MistR and Xyp9x have caught the flack for their team’s early exit, and it’s not unfair per se. The pair were usually at the bottom of the scoreboard without being able to claim “IGL” as an excuse.
But that’s because the one who does claim that is gla1ve, the constant between success and failure for Astralis. For a man who people consider a fragging IGL, bagging a total of 36 kills across 2 maps, just ain’t it.
It’s too early to suggest anything radical like cutting him, but if he makes another change and still can’t get them to perform. Questions should be asked of the IGL once hailed as the “GOAT” in his role.
But maybe, in the spirit of Ferrari, next year will be their year.
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:
Illustration by ANDY. Source: PGL | Stefan Petrescu
Cutting support players isn’t new. EnVyUs cut Kio. MIBR cut TACO. VP cut SANJI.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes the problem really is just the guy on your team who can’t shoot as good. There was outrage at SANJI’s removal, but FL1T hasn’t turned out too badly, has he?
Which brings us to Cloud9. Overdrive and now HLTV have reported that Cloud9 are trialling replacements for their support player of interz. Which sh1ro rubbished, obviously. Players always do.
The favourite to replace him is Forester, Entropiq’s lurker, and a serious player. He sports a 1.12 rating on LAN this year and battered Astralis at Pro League.
It’s the classic change. It’s tried and tested. You offset the chemistry and selflessness of interz with a bloke who simply kills more people.
SANJI was cut from VP, but it wasn’t FL1T who replaced his roles — it was Qikert. Forester isn’t as pure a star as FL1T was (he even plays B on Mirage CT-Side), but if he joins nafany or HObbit can pick up some of the slack.
This very well might work. Cloud9 haven’t made a roster change since HObbit joined in mid-2020, and they do keep falling at the same hurdle.
It took a roster move for Astralis (adding gla1ve) and Liquid (adding Stewie2k) to overcome their choking issues. Why can’t Cloud9 try the same?
The problem comes if Cloud9 pick one of the other players they’re trialling. Along with the very good Forester, HLTV think that Cloud9 are also trialling buster, who’s okay, and SANJI, which makes zero sense at all.
They’re decent anchors, but they’re not better than interz are they? It’s a sideways move, if not backwards. It’s a move for the sake of it, to show the community you understand something is wrong but not exactly what is.
It says that you don’t know who to cut, so you just swapped your support for a different one.
The bolder move is to cut nafany, to remove the system that seems to keep failing Cloud9 in the biggest moments. There are IGLs out there worthy of a shot, whether it be chopper or jerry or whoever. HObbit might be off to NAVI, meaning you can sign a Patsi or mir (or YEKINDAR) to replace nafany’s aggression while having a more measured IGL.
It’s dangerous, but at least that risk might get some reward. Swapping interz for anyone other than Forester is just a waste of time.
👍 Good
📝 “Hey, can I copy your homework?”
😬 The good, bad, and ugly kind of return