Teams who looked bad at Cologne

It's alright though, once we're back on LAN, device will show he's worth $1m.

As Astralis looked strong on their return, their old superstar faltered. Maybe there's something in the Astralis system being greater than the player. Maybe s1mple really is a better player, like your eyes told you he was.

Or maybe NiP shouldn't be playing academy players after spending so much on one player.

Maybe it's all of the above.

What is certain is that NiP won't be winning IEM Cologne, after they got spanked by Virtus.pro. In fairness, they were in the lower bracket after losing to Gambit, but when you're talking about winning the Major in November, you can't be worrying about other good teams.

At least ZywOo also went home early, with Vitality getting 2-0'd by aforementioned old men olof and karrigan, and their gang of zoomers.

And at least ZywOo still looked pretty good. But not best player in the world good. Sorry, not sorry.

They joined NA's hopes and dreams in 9-12th, as Team Liquid fell 2-0 to BIG. Yeah, that BIG. The onliners. Spending so long in NA has fried Team Liquid's brains and now they can't play CS properly.

BIG then ended up dying at the hands of an impressive looking VP. Just like the good old days, VP are bizarrely good all of a sudden after being horrible last tournament, and BIG let you down when the going gets tough.

Not before they managed to eliminate mousesports, though. mousesports are apparently cursed at Cologne, and continue their streak of never qualifying for playoffs. They didn't even look that bad - they took a map off Gambit, then lost in fourth overtime vs Liquid - but 'not that bad' doesn't cut it on LAN.

Even Heroic went out, though admittedly, they looked pretty good for the most part. They knocked out FURIA and beat Team Spirit, but a loss in the deciding game to FaZe meant they fell out of the running.

Renegades might have dealt with MIBR, but when an actual Brazilian team comes knocking, there's not much you can do - they fell to FURIA. Team Spirit came close twice, but fell to both Heroic and FaZe, leaving the TLDR newsletter struggling to find a team to support.