ESL Pro League S18 group A day 1 results

On day 1 of ESL Pro League S18, four exciting matches were played and two of them finished with a surprising result.

For anyone watching CS:GO regularly, both Astralis and FURIA Esports are strong teams. People have expectations from them, especially after they’ve invested large amounts of money into changing their rosters. But both of them failed quite miserably against opponents they should have defeated. More on this later.

The casual victories

The two matches that ended with predictable results were the first and the last.

Team Vitality defeated ORKS with ease, losing just 13 rounds in total. Both Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and Lotan “Spinx” Giladi were off-the-charts again. The rest of the squad had very little to do to secure the victory.

Starting EPL with a 2-0 win against ORKS! GG guys. We play again tomorrow, see you

— ZywOo (@zywoo) August 30, 2023

In the match between Grayhound and GamerLegion, GL played really well and was in control the entire time, winning the first half of each map with a score of 10-5. It seems that replacing their superstar Romanian, Ivan “iM” Mihai, with another Romanian player, Sebastian “volt” Malos, was a good idea.

GamerLegion’s victory wasn’t as swift as that of Vitality, but it was convincing. The scores were 16-9 on Anubis and 16-13 on Ancient. The entire roster played well.

The upsets

In the match between Astralis and Ninjas in Pyjamas, Nicolai “device” Reedtz was expected to beat his former team and prove why his decision to leave NiP was a good one. But the Swedes, helped by a Dane and a Ukrainian, played incredibly well.

Despite having a good performance, device couldn’t stop his opponents from winning round after round. Once again, he and his teammate, Benjamin “blameF” Bremer did well, but the two less experienced players, Christian “Buzz” Andersen and Johannes “b0RUP” Borup had terrible scores: 21-34 and 20-38.

The map scores were 16-10 on Ancient and 16-11 on Inferno.

In the other match, between FURIA Esports and Movistar Riders, the Brazilians were beaten with ease. If that’s how they’re going to play throughout the entire tournament, their odds of advancing to the playoffs are slim and the decision to sign Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo might have been a bad one.

To be fair, this lineup still needs at least three more months to mature and gain fluency. But it’s still a bit disappointing to see them losing 16-8 and 16-13 against one of the weakest competitors in the tournament.

Header: ESL