Top orgs breathe a sigh of relief

You might have noticed that Vitality and Cloud9 weren’t in any of these sections. If you didn’t, you probably weren’t reading closely enough. We’re a little bit offended, actually.

Luckily for them, their bumpy ride did end at their intended destinations.

While Cloud9 started out 0-2 - losing to Grayhound, of course - they were able to grind back and find their feet to ensure they just about squeaked into the Legends’ stage. They had sh1ro to thank for that. When everyone else went missing, the baby-faced sniper put up some monster performances to drag them back into games and stone wall offences. He averaged a 1.45 rating at the Challengers’ Stage.

HObbit did fine too, but his usual partner Ax1le dropped a 1.08. Fair to say sh1ro picked up the slack. And then hit everyone with it until they died.

A similar tale befell Team Vitality, whose patchy form was bailed out at times by ZywOo; but it was Magisk who stood tall in overtime on Vertigo to deny OG. ZywOo, eventually, came online and sparked ‘em out on map three.

fnatic, similarly, survived a scare as they pushed past 9z, much to the dismay of the Brazilian crowd. They’d become so desperate they started supporting the Argentinian/Uruguayan/Chilean mix just because they had one Brazilian player and coach.

That’s like a French person supporting the Cloud9 Colossus because ALEX is kind of French. It does mean that, somehow, there’s an English player in the top 16 of a Major. It’s coming home twice this winter, lads.

None of the players outside of nicoodoz (at +3) went positive, but they won’t care a jot about that. For a team that’s all about firepower, it might be a worrying sign, though.