G2 Esports jump to third place in CS:GO rankings

G2 Esports were not even in the top 10 when they started playing in BLAST Premier: World Final. They had struggled to find success the entire season and their best result had been the second place they got at IEM Katowice.

But thanks to the phenomenal victory they obtained over Team Liquid in the Grand Final of BLAST Premier: World Final, they’re now ranked third globally. Only Heroic and Outsiders are above them and they too will likely be surpassed if G2 play the same at the next IEM Katowice, which will take place at the beginning of February.

What makes G2 so strong

G2’s main strength used to be Nikola “NiKo” Kovac, who has been a top five CS:GO player since 2017. Last year he was third, after Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut.

But now that Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov has assumed his final form, NiKo has a much easier job and can even play the IGL role. This makes G2 extremely strong against most opponents and gives them the ability to play the game in their comfort zone.

M0NESY provides all the firepower that’s needed but he is not alone. Most of the G2 roster is fully capable of taking the carry role if M0NESY has a bad day. We’ve already seen this in the Grand Final of BLAST Premier: World Final, when Justin “jks” Savage was the best player on the server with 40 kills and just 24 deaths.

G2’s weaknesses

G2’s primary weakness is their limited map pool. The team plays really well on three or four maps, but struggles on the rest. Right now, their strategy seems to be to ensure that at least two of their strong maps will get played. Nuke seems to be their best one but Anubis is also one of their best ones.

On maps like Vertigo and Ancient, G2 have been struggling. They don’t look like a team that feels confident on these maps. At best, they manage to win thanks to a heroic performance on the part of m0NESY or some other player.

Another weakness of G2 is their relatively inexperienced roster. Players like m0NESY and jks are very talented but they lack the level of confidence provided by the experience of winning at least a Major.

In a way, G2 are the kind of team that wins something big every now and then thanks to an unusually good performance, but then goes back to struggling. It remains to be seen if 2023 can change their results and reveal them as one of the best teams in CS:GO.

Header: G2 Esports