Despite recent success at a lesser tournament, G2 still had something to prove. ESL Pro League was the perfect stage for them to make a statement and they did.
ESL Pro League is in the books and G2 are the champions. That makes back-to-back LAN victories for French team. A few weeks ago I wrote about their victory in Tours and how, realistically, it was a nice little earner for the team but didn’t really tell us how good they were. On home soil, they had beaten a fairly mediocre field of teams en route to a comfortable final match against Hellraisers. It was a victory, but not a particularly impressive or meaningful one.
Well, after the Pro League finals, I’m finally convinced. I must confess, when researching this article I was surprised to find out that HLTV ranked North 5th in the world in their most recent update. That’s partly G2’s fault because they looked a class above their opponents in the final. In fact, G2 looked so much better than North that I consider their victories over SK to be more impressive.
SK are ranked 3rd in the world at time of writing. They seemed to be having a bit of a 2015-esque resurgence lately - until they bumped into G2. I don’t know if HLTV’s rigid points system lets G2 overtake SK in the next ranking update, but anybody watching the games this past week will surely know that G2 were the better team. I suppose that’s the trouble with ranking teams - it’s hard to account for on the day performances or sudden changes of form.
Then again, though, G2 have been on a steady rise since their roster changes and if Pro League was anything to go by, they aren’t showing signs of stopping here. Indeed, Pro League itself - the whole of it, not just the finals - was a perfect parallel of G2’s form in general. The commentators were keen to point out how G2 started the season with one win and eight losses. A miraculous turnaround brought them all the way to championship status - a modern day fairy tale, but with well-groomed French 20-somethings instead of dwarves and princesses.
Even at this event, they stuttered in the early stages. A narrow win over Envy was followed up by a shockingly one-sided defeat to Cloud 9 - the North American team’s only win of the entire tournament. After another loss to Immortals, G2 were even on the brink of not getting out of groups. But like a true team of champions, they fought hardest when it mattered most and secured first place in the group with wins over SK and Fnatic.
Looking at results and rankings can only tell you so much, though. Truly telling was the MVP performance of one Kenny S. Kenny returning to form at the same time as his team starts to win tournaments is no coincidence. Over the course of the Pro League finals he showed us how he earned his reputation and in the final itself he was beastly. Across the four map series he went 88/53 and grabbed several important kills at key moments - something that can’t easily be measured.
Kenny was great, and fully deserved his MVP award, but G2 showed up as a team. Everybody on the team had a positive K/D ratio in the final and three G2 players placed inside the top 10 for the event as a whole. SK were the only other team to have more than a single player in the top 10: that is the measure of G2’s dominance at this event.
So, what’s next for G2? In the most literal sense, they will be attempting to qualify for the next Major. Judging by the calibre of opposition, and if G2 maintain current form, it should be a breeze for the French. They have already show that they can take down Hellraisers comfortably. Mousesports put in some solid performances in Pro League but should be no match for G2 and the same could be said for Team Liquid who fared better than expected. With eight slots available and only nine teams announced so far it would take a very different kind of miracle for G2 to miss out on a trip to Krakow in July.
Once the celebrations have drawn to a close, I think G2 will be looking at the Major right away. I am already taking their qualification for granted - hopefully they won’t do that - and wondering if they can cement themselves as a truly great team. Winning a major is the only thing left for them to do but the final hurdle is often the hardest; just ask current world number one, Astralis, if you don’t believe me. There’s the small matter of ESL One Cologne in the meantime - a well-stacked event in its own right, but one which they are definitely capable of winning - but surely G2’s eyes will be on the Major.
Image Courtesy of G2's Twitter
