When ESL announced the groups for the Road to Rio RMR they left out one detail: The A in Europe A actually stands for Anarchy.
One of Sprout and B8 is guaranteed to make it to the Major, which is as insane as it sounds. Either Zyphon, staehr, and refrezh might make the Major ahead of Astralis, or else B8, the #69 (lol) rated team in the world, will let five unknown Ukrainians escape the horrors of a war at home for a shot at glory.
CS:GO is bonkers.
The 3-0 teams on the other hand seem pretty reasonable.
FaZe is the world's #1 ranked team and made it through the group stage 3-0 as mentioned elsewhere. They made the job more difficult for themselves: going to overtime on four out of the five maps they played, which is vintage FaZe Clan.
The other qualified team from Group A is NIP who, despite having AleksiB as their IGL, looks... good? If you're as surprised as us: Don't be.
hampus has always had some serious talent and unleashing him by taking the leading duties off his shoulders was a good idea from NIP. And judging by his stats, it seems to be paying off.
Someone whose stats we never need to look at is s1mple, and once again he was the driving force behind NAVI’s easy 3-0 group stage in Group B. Illuminar, MOUZ and Outsiders never really stood a chance. As it should be.
At the other end of the standings, Group A is also delivering anarchy.
The 0-3 teams aren't too shocking. ECSTATIC and Aurora were never expected to fight the likes of G2 and Astralis. Those big teams are obviously doing much better...
Or, that’s what you'd think, but the standings beg to differ:
The Danes and The Names find themselves 1-2, eyeing tickets home, instead of tickets to Rio. Lucky for them the draw has been completed and they're playing weaker opposition in their first BO3s of the RMR, going up against GamerLegion and forZe respectively.
But, who cares: Astralis qualifying or not qualifying for Rio only tells us how long they'll stay on life support before the plug gets pulled. So does it really matter who they play? It'll end the same way regardless. When life support isn't enough you might need a new device
Qualified for the Major:
Eliminated from the Major:
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