Caption

After what seems like endless rounds of online CS, ESL Pro League Season 23 is down to just eight teams.

Eight teams, all who will be looking to crown themselves as the best team to exist within the shadow of Vitality.

MOUZ (apparently) are the favourites to do so, although they do have a harder route to the final than their closest competitor, Spirit. They’ll first have to get past FUT, who are an unknown quantity on stage, and that’s a game that figures like dziugss, dem0n, and lauNX could all very quickly turn on its head.

Should MOUZ win that game, they’ll then face off against the winner of The MongolZ vs NAVI.

Now that The MongolZ have had some time with cobrazera they’ve proven they can still be dangerous, and they’ll be keen to go out on a high before their coach, maaRaa, takes a little break. As for NAVI, yes they suck sometimes, but they’re unpredictable, and when they - and in particular, makazze - are on, The MongolZ won’t stand a chance in stopping them.

Honestly, we don’t have a clue which way it will go, but we know that both teams have more than enough ability to end MOUZ’ tournament with another top four placing.

On the Spirit side of things, their quarter-final sees them face off against Astralis, who, let’s be honest, should be getting their sh-t pushed in.

And listen, that’s not because we don’t like this Astralis, or because we think they’re bad, we just don’t think they’re equipped to deal with donk.

It’s not just that, either - just look at their recent matches. Yes, they may have smacked some teams, but they also frequently get smacked. If donk is firing from round one, it won’t be a long contest.

Facing Spirit in the following round will be either Legacy or Aurora. It’s another hard game to call considering how much better Legacy have looked with arT, but on the basis that a big part of their run has been thanks to overperformances from n1ssim and saadzin, we’ll say regression to the mean gives this one to Aurora.

So that gives us Spirit versus Aurora. We think we all know how that one goes.

As for the final? Well, Spirit versus MOUZ in an arena? We know how that one goes, too.

So, congratulations, Spirit. You’re now the biggest team in Vitality’s shadow.

The crown prince of darkness, but good luck finding the light.