EUL: BDS Take the Lead, Rogue Fall Off

The third day of matches had quite a few surprised in store for us. BDS confidently set themselves on top of Rogue, managed to reach first place, and in turn pushed the Germans down to last place. Meanwhile, the ex TrainHard players fought for their place in the EUL. 

Empire were the surprise winners of the day. They opened the match day up with a close 7-5 win over Vitality, which almost forced them into overtime. Instead, they secured three clean points, which helped them climb up three spots in the EUL rankings. They’re now just behind Vitality and only need a few more points to close the gap to the Top 4.

Secret have stopped looking like their 2020 Stage 2 version. Had they kept up their old patterns, they would have won their match over Virtus.pro with ease. However, they gave away a weak 3-7 match and let VP run off with the victory. Andrey “M1loN” Mironov delivered a 1.53 rating and held a tight grip on the match.

Following the conclusion of that game, we saw the epic battle that helped BDS regain the top spot. After their overtime loss on the second match day, their fans weren’t entirely sure whether they were still top tier material. But after showing such dominance going up against Rogue, BDS will have restored some of that confidence in their fans.

The new G2 isn’t really there just yet. At least their results show that they can’t always deliver peak performance. But when they manage to, they can confidently set themselves on top of a strong Cowana Gaming. The Brits almost made a comeback happen, but failed in the last and most crucial round. Jordan “Kayak” Morley made sure that G2 scraped by on a 7-5 scoreline and three full points.

THE TRAINHARD DEBACLE

The French organisation is by far not the first one to make a retreat from Siege. Chaos, Evil Geniuses, eUnited, Tempo Storm, the list goes on and on. But we’ve never witnessed this happen in the midst of an ongoing season. During EUL Stage 1, the organization announced that it was shutting down. On the very same day, the roster entered battle against Natus Vincere. Their thoughts were probably dominated by the looming fear of being without a job fairly soon.

The 2-7 map was a sad affair. NaVi were probably sorry to strike the team and its players down like this. But now TrainHard have descended to eighth place. The lineup’s future is unknown. In the past, Ubisoft sided with the organizations and vacated the spot. This meant that the players found themselves outside of the league all of a sudden. It remains to be seen whether Ubisoft will make the same kind of decision during an ongoing season. The pros have already sharply criticized this behavior and wish for the Frenchmen to retain their spot and for EUL to find a new home for them.

THE FOURTH DAY OF MATCHES

More matches are coming up on the first of July. The battle between Empire and Rogue will be of  particular interest. The former want to prove that they’re rebounding, the latter want to leave the lowest spot in the rankings as quickly as possible. TrainHard are expecting to lose out against BDS Esport. Natus Vincere are getting the chance to regain their Top 2 spot versus Cowana Gaming. That’s because Secret, who had surpassed them in the standings earlier on, now have to measure up to G2 Esports. This will be quite a tough challenge for Secret. Their VP match showed that the pacbull show doesn’t last forever. Vitality and VP are now down to the middle of the pack. The winner of their matchup will get a shot at breaking out of the formation and entering the Top 4.