Turns out the team who did the best out of the Paris Major was Monte.

Well, out of the underdogs at least. They clearly didn’t end up better than Vitality.

They secured a spot at the next ESL Pro League and won their first LAN trophy in Jönköping over a resilient Eternal Fire, who survived way past their expiry date multiple times thanks to some heroics from their stars.

A carry performance from woxic in the semi-finals, a crazy ace from XANTARES in the grand final, some superb rounds from Wicadia… it felt like Eternal Fire couldn’t lose.

Monte, though, held strong - and a step-up from br0 in the big moment saw him topfrag the final after a relatively quiet event. In fact, it was sdy who was the hot hand through the rest of the tournament - averaging a kill per round up ‘til the final.

Not bad for a guy s1mple spent months degrading, really.

Monte didn’t have an easy path to the final, either. They were the ones who took down the ESL Challenger titans Virtus.pro, who have spent the last two years making these events look a bit silly. Eternal Fire needed a bunch of overtimes to beat MIBR in their semi-final.

The big worry for VP is that fame never really showed up. fame is one of their star riflers, but he was kept pretty schtum in nearly every game, occasionally popping up with a big round but not being the consistent dynamo he is at his peak.

The biggest disappointment? TYLOO, formerly Rare Atom, made up four of the five lowest rated players. advent ended on a 0.54 rating.

It’s easy to scapegoat the IGL, but he does average a 0.80 rating while playing in Asia. He might be a bit of a liability inside the server.

The final standings were:

1st 🇺🇦 Monte - $50.000

2nd 🇹🇷 Eternal Fire - $20.000

3-4th 🇧🇷 MIBR - $10.000

3-4th 🇷🇺 Virtus.pro - $10.000

5-6th 🇺🇸 Nouns - $3.000

5-6th 🇪🇺 GamerLegion - $3.000