Invites for ESL One Belo Horizonte are revealed.
Xerm: Will Faze Clan be able to secure their first title of 2018?
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The Dutch Mousesports-AWPer Chris "chrisJ" de Jong takes down all of the oncoming Liquid-players with his trusty AWP.
The Russian Na'Vi-player Denis "electronic" Sharipov takes care of four of the pushing Mousesports-players with his trusty AK-47.
The Norweigan Faze-player Håvard "rain" Nygaard taps down five Mousesports-members with the pistol.
At the end of March an ESL One was announced for Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and now we know who the four teams who have been invited to the event are.
The $200,000 tournament which is set to take place at the Mineirinho Arena from June 15-17 has had it's first four teams revealed.
The invited teams are SK Gaming, Team Liquid, Faze Clan and Mousesports.
The other four slots are to be obtained by qualifiers, with two teams coming from Europe, one from North America and one from South America.
Coming up this weekend; Faze Clan continues the hunt for their very first trophy of 2018. Over four months have passed since they secured the ECS Season 4 title, that is despite playing two tournament finals so far this year. Will their participation in the V4 Future Sports Festival see an end to this?
First of all, let's just all agree that 2018 was supposed to be the year of Faze Clan, and the Eleague Major Boston was pretty much a given win for the star-packed team. Well, it hasn't really started out that way now, has it?
Losing the Eleague Major Boston final to the Americans of Cloud9 was a hard hit to Faze Clan, who had been the heavy favorites to win the title for several months. A month later, they were hit by another hard blow when failing to secure a spot in the Starladder i-League Starseries Season 4 Grand Final, and then finishing fourth after losing the decider against another North American team, Team Liquid.
Fast forwarding another seven days and Faze Clan played another tournament final. This time around it was the IEM Katowice Grand Final, against the Swedes of Fnatic. A team that hadn't won a single title for two years. All five maps were played and guess what? Faze Clan lost yet again.
Chris "chrisJ" de John and his Mousesports is the biggest threat to Faze Clan during the V4 Future Sports Festival.
What has changed since late last year?
Given their ECS Season 4 win in mid-December last year, many of us thought that Faze Clan was finally on the verge of overcoming their hardship to secure titles. They did win a few others during 2017, but they also ended up losing quite a few tournament finals, giving them a "not quite there yet" stamp. However, winning ECS Season 4, beating Mousesports 2-1 in the Grand Final, didn't set them up for the future in the way that I thought, and falling back into their "not quite there yet" state has proven to put a strain on the team that has been seen arguing during tournaments. It's not a wild guess that the team is under an immense pressure from the organization to start delivering some more titles, proving that they are worth their hefty salaries. Because we have to remember that the five players representing Faze Clan are some of the biggest stars ever of the CS:GO scene. Is the pressure, and the lack of titles so far this year, starting to create cracks in the foundation of the team? Maybe. But now they have a chance to repair those cracks.
The V4 Future Sports Festival in Budapest, Hungary, isn't exactly a top-tier tournament, even though they have a massive €500,000 prize pool. With Faze Clan and Mousesports being the two teams with the best results in recent history, and Virtus.pro and Hellraisers adding some more profiles to the tournament, the rest of the eight teams really doesn't have much to show for themselves.
The four higher profiled teams should also be the ones making it to the playoffs, even though you can't be that sure with a struggling Virtus.pro in attendance. However, let's pretend that Faze Clan and Mousesports win their respective groups, with Hellraisers and Virtus.pro finishing as runner-ups, this would mean that the semifinals would be played between Faze Clan and Virtus.pro, as well as Mousesports and Hellraisers. That should mean a tournament final between Faze Clan and Mousesports. We all know that Mousesports can play some really good Counter-Strike, but Faze Clan would still be the favorites going into the game.
Let's say that they will live up to the expectations this time, securing the title with a 3-1 win in the Grand Final. Now that would be a well-needed confidence boost for the players of Faze Clan, showing them that the ECS Season 4 win wasn't a one time high for them. That would make them really dangerous, going into the important Dreamhack Masters Marseille tournament in mid-April.
Could a change to the coaching staff, where Robert "RobbaN" Dahlström has an important role, come as a result of a potential disaster in Budapest?
What if Faze Clan were to lose the Grand Final, or even worse, not even making it there? Well, if Faze Clan would fail miserably and not even making it out of the group stage, then it shouldn't surprise anyone if they made some changes to the team. The question is what kind of changes, and when they would be implemented. There are quite a few tournaments coming up while we're closing in on summer, and the time to prepare for the Faceit Major London is steadily decreasing. And one thing is for sure, Faze Clan will be looking for revenge, entering the SSE Arena in Wembley, UK.
Only eight teams will make up a prize pool of 500,000 this weekend when the V4 Future Sports Festival is settled in Budapest, Hungary.
The two-day tournament, no matches played in the CS: GO tournament on Saturday, has a very mixed start-up field. In addition to the aforementioned Faze Clan there are also teams like Mousesports , HellRaisers and Virtus.pro in place. The latter team has been tough during the first two tournaments they played with the five player. Now, however, they get the chance in a tournament where the last four teams rank on HLTV's top 30 ranking.
The two-day tournament, no matches played in the CS: GO tournament on Saturday, has a very mixed start-up field. In addition to the aforementioned Faze Clan there are also teams like Mousesports, Hellraisers and Virtus.pro in place. The latter team has been tough during the first two tournaments they played with the five player. Now, however, they get the chance in a tournament where the last four teams rank on HLTV's top 30 ranking.
The tournament will be settled in Syma Sport-és Rendezvényközpont, in the Hungarian capital, Budapest.
The country with the most representatives in the tournament is Poland, having ten players coming from two full teams of five. Next comes the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with each having eight players in place. In total, twelve best of two matches will be played, followed by two best of three Semi-finals and one best of five Grand Final.
As the tournament is aimed at the V4 countries (Visegrád Group), consisting of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Solvakia, only teams with a link to those regions are eligible to take part.
The event consists of eight teams, four of which were invited and four which from country based qualifiers.
The tournament begins with a Round Robin group game. The eight teams have been divided into two groups, in which teams face each other in matches played in the best of two maps format. The two best teams in each group then go to the playoffs, starting with semifinals. The semifinals are to be best of three maps, while the finals are determined over five maps.
All playoff games will be played on Sunday, March 25th. This means that the two finalists can play as many as eight (!) Maps in the same day. The start time for the semifinals is set at 09.00 and 12.30, while the finale starts at 17.45. Which could mean a long day of play for the teams involved.
V4 Future Sports Festival boasts an impressive prize pool of 500,000 euros. The winners walk home with the lion's share of this prize pool, a cool €200,000. The four teams missing the playoffs can comfort themselves with leaving Budapest with €25,000 in their pocket.
Similarly to the impressive prize pool, the organizers brought in some big names when it comes to the broadcasting team. The host for the event is veteran Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner, who is set to discuss the proceedings with Duncan "Thorin" Shields, Janko "YNk" Paunović and making his debut on a large stage, in his home country, Balázs "Draulon" Lengyel.
February 17-25 will see some of the best talent Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has to offer go to battle in Kiev, Ukraine for a share of $300,000.
16 Teams will descend on the Cybersport Arena, Kiev, to take part in yet another instalment of the StarLadder i-League StarSeries. Last seasons winners were Faze Clan, although back then they still had Aleksi "allu" Jalli and Fabien "kioShiMa" Fiey in their lineup.
The list of participating teams is a varied one, ranging from the Major Champions in Cloud9, the team ranked number 1 in the world Faze to teams hoping to show what they are capable of on the international stage such as MVP PK. With some new rosters to keep our eyes on, it will be an interesting test early on in the year for all those involved.
The event is using best of three games from the start, which in a Swiss system between sixteen teams should give us a lot of Counter-Strike to watch. Due to this, two games will be happening concurrently.
We will see the Top 8 teams in the group stage progress through to the single elimination bracket playoffs, whilst the other 8 teams are eliminated.
There is a $300,000 prize pool up for grabs at this event, which is distributed between the 16 teams as follows.
There are two English language broadcast streams available, due to multiple matches taking place at one time.
The very first playoff match of the day was to be a Quarter-Final between Mousesports and Faze. A rematch of the ECS Season 4 Finals Grand Final.
The map vetoes had Mousesports removing Overpass whilst Faze Clan removed Cobblestone. Mousesports went for a surprise pick of Nuke whilst Faze picked Cache, eventually Mirage was removed by Faze and Inferno by Mousesports, leaving Train as the deciding third map.
As the first map, Nuke, got underway Mousesports were to start on the difficult Terrorist side. Mousesports lost both pistols on the map and the following force/eco rounds meaning they dropped 6 rounds directly due to pistol losses. Despite this they looked set to take the map at 15-13 until Miikka "suNny" Kemppi, having a great game and eventually ending 41-21, fell to his death and his team ultimately lost the round. Suddenly it was 15-14 and a hero play from Nikola "NiKo" Kovač getting two kills in the fire before burning to death after the round end took it to overtime. The Mousesports side will have been frustrated at this point whilst Faze kept their momentum going to eventually win 19-16.
Nikola "NiKo" Kovač secured overtime with a hero play in the fire 1v2.
The second map was Cache, a map that is easily opened up with aim duels and raw talent, something that should lend itself to the star names on Faze. This time Faze started on the Terrorist side and once again took their pistol round and the following two rounds. After getting close in the middle, eventually Faze did manage to take a strong 10-5 first half lead. To start the second half Mousesports finally took their first pistol of the series, and after almost dropping the anti-force to deagles, they pick up the three early half rounds. They do however lose the first gun round of the half as Faze lead 11-8. After some desperation plays towards the end of the second half from Mousesports, some strong site holds from the likes of Håvard "rain" Nygaard close out the victory 16-9.
With this the international super team take the series 2-0 and progress to the Semi-Finals whilst Mousesports are defeated.