Furia, America’s last hope

After searching all year, we’ve found it! The great North American hope in CSGO!

Furia topped out Group B in ESL Pro League this week, winning their first four games en route to the top spot in the group. Sure, they might not be North American, but at this point I think the region will take what it can get.

All five of Furia’s players popped off, with star yuurih leading the way. He ended the group stage with a 1.18 rating and +45 kd. His teammates weren’t slacking either though; all of them ended with at least a 1.0 rating.

But as high as Furia flew this tournament, Vitality fell just as hard. With their international roster and ZyWoo coming off a second-best player in the world ranking last year this team came into the year as one of the best. They are not that right now.

Sure, ZyWoo still has a 1.18 rating in his matches in 2022, 1.14 against top-30 teams, but for him that’s awful. This is a player who last year ended the year with a 1.29 rating both against top 30 teams and in general (they only played 11 maps against teams outside of that range).

But even with ZyWoo still playing reasonably well so far this year, it hasn’t meant anything. Vitality went out in 9th/12th in Katowice, and this week they failed to advance out of groups in Pro League as they lost to FaZe, FURIA and ENCE.

FaZe and ENCE, notably, round out the top three. Outsiders weren’t able to clinch a spot on Sunday when they became only the second team at the event to lose to Vitality, the first being Sprout, and so FaZe’s place was secured before they handed Furia their only loss of the group stage.

Meanwhile, ENCE and most notably Spinx and hades, who had a 1.17 and a 1.15 respectively, dominated. They beat FaZe, Vitality, Sprout and Outsiders, ending the group stage 4-1 with a round differential just four worse than Furia’s.

So far, ESL has been pretty painful for a lot of the big names, with the likes of Vitality, MOUZ, and G2 already being eliminated. That’ll make group C, which has less big names than A and B, all the more interesting when it starts this week.