In just a week, from March 17-18, a total of eight teams will find themselves in a clinch to gather as much as possible from the $80,000 that are on the line. Four of them should be considered to be the underdogs, as they are the group with the lowest chances of making it to the playoffs depending on the group seeds. Ironically, these are exactly the four teams that have qualified.
Torpedo Gaming
Torpedo have had little to no exposure to top teams in their lifetime, but have had interesting results against other European competition, as they for instance beat ENCE, the Finnish team that is built around ex-NiP player Aleksi “allu” Jalli. Overall they unfortunately lack a portfolio of decent win streaks against other teams and have fallen prey to teams such as the ex-Epsilon squad or ALTERNATE aTTax. From all the teams in these finals they are the ones with the least chances to succeed.
Team Immunity
At the Faceit S3 Finals in Sweden the Australian Team Legacy faced off against Virtus.Pro and Immunity will have the opportunity to get revenge on them since they will be matched up in the early groups and judging from V.P’s recent performance it is not that improbable to see the Aussies walk away with a victory here. In the domestic matchups they were able to set themselves on top with 9 map victories and only one loss and in only four of those matches the opponents were able to reach double digits. After the Oceanic shuffle we might see a new setup to which Virtus.Pro are not used and in light of their recent slump they might not be able to adapt.
NRG eSports
Finally Fatih “gob b” Dayik will be returning to European soil, but in company of three North American players. Gob b was relieved of his duties at mousesports due to his inability to perform up to the other players’ level skill-wise, but his tactical knowledge and features as a historically known in-game-leader are exactly what is needed to compete on U.S. grounds. Most of the teams do not feature a tactical mastermind and this heavily plays to the advantage of NRG, even more since there are decent fraggers on board, for instance Peter “ptr” Gurney. It will be interesting to see them play European top teams, but in comparison to the other underdogs they are the strongest alongside…
FlipSid3 Tactics
Of all the underdogs they are the most eligible to defeat a favourite team. In their qualification match for these finals they beat Lounge Gaming without dropping any more than four rounds in total and on their way to qualify for the major they brought it to 16-14 in their match against the strong G2 Esports. Overall they are the most accommodated team to the European way of playing and have shown decent results. However, just yesterday they lost twice to EnVyUs and in that game Timothée “DEVIL” Démolon, the newest French acquisition, had some stellar performances. Nonetheless Virtus.Pro could be subjected to a demolition here, depending on how strong the teams show up.
As sad as it may sound, there is no great chance for the underdogs. Sure, Virtus.Pro could bail out in the group stages, but EnVyUs will not be upset twice, surely, as they seem strengthened after their roster change. This means that one spot might be gifted to the underdogs so the really interesting part will not be about them beating the favourites but rather seeing them fight it out for that tiny spot within their own ranks.
