SAW seen out by Outsiders

Well, in the end...things could only get so weird.

This group was really close to being weird as anything, but in the end it’s about as standard as one could’ve predicted.

Navi was a surprise to some extent, forced to play a final bo3 against forZe to in order to avoid having to play in the Challengers stage after their loss to Heroic in the 2-0 round. Despite their eventual victory in that series, Navi had some struggles this tournament in every category but one.

s1mple was possibly the best he’s ever been, posting a truly insane 1.4 rating with 9 maps played and a 1.63 kda. Perhaps more ridiculously, even in the two maps NaVi lost to Heroic - their only losses so far - he still had over a 1.2 rating in both. The third map was the only map where he didn’t get a positive kda as he ended 18-18.

With poor performances from Electronic, which will hopefully be resolved in time for the actual major given he was sick this week, it was a little concerning to see the team return to their old favorite technique: Hope s1mple goes off.

The biggest surprise qualification was probably Eternal Fire, the full-Turkish roster currently ranked 40th but with big name players like woxic and XANTARES. They pulled a pretty rough schedule, losing an opening BO1 to FaZe before going against the likes of Dignitas, Vitality, Fnatic and OG.

While none of those teams ended up qualifying besides Vitality, who looked iffy themselves, on paper many of the bigger orgs were represented in EF’s opponents. Just qualifying is a big win for the org, which now gets to try and play spoiler at the major itself.

Then there’s Vitality, who to be fair did qualify. On the other hand, they had three players (Magisk, apEX and misutaaa with negative KDAs. Dupreeh and ZyWoo had to go 1.19 and 1.30 ratings respectively, with +30 and +53 kdas, in order for the team to go through in a 2-1 win over Mouz.

And yet that still wasn’t the biggest event of the tournament.

Underdogs SAW had us all sitting on the edge of our chair versus Outsiders as they were just one round, one pixel and 0.02 seconds away from the Major (see for yourself) and what would’ve been the biggest upset qualifications in a long time.

Instead, SAW are going home with nothing but one of the most absolutely soul-crushing moments in CS:GO.

No matter who you were rooting for, seeing a team so close and having fought so hard only to lose it by the smallest of margins is heartbreaking.