IEM Cologne playoffs preview

This Friday, IEM Cologne will enter its playoffs stage. Just six of the initial 24 teams are left in the race and all of them are very strong.

Among these teams there is Team Vitality, who won the Paris Major, Heroic, who are one of the top 3 teams at the moment, and Cloud9, who are eager to show the world what they can do with their new and improved roster.

Dates and format

The playoffs stage of IEM Cologne 2023 takes place between August 4-6. The format is single-elimination. The winners of the two groups, ENCE and G2 Esports, await their opponents in the semifinals. The other four participants, Vitality, Cloud9, Heroic, and Astralis, will start in the quarterfinals.

What’s strange about this situation is that both Vitality and Heroic were bested in the group stage by an opponent that’s theoretically weaker. Until the end of the week, we will know whether the group stage losses were a fluke or if we have a new pecking order in CS:GO.

Opening matches

. @Ax1LeGOD is back for IEM Cologne playoffs 👊 pic.twitter.com/XVPZpgcn0k

— Cloud9 CS:GO (@C9CSGO) August 2, 2023

In the first two matches of the playoffs, Team Vitality will play against Cloud9 while Heroic will need to defeat a strong Astralis if they want to advance.

For Vitality, this will be a very difficult match. Despite having Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, the French are still struggling with cohesion at this point, as we saw in their match against G2 Esports. They are arguably weak on more than one map, and that could easily lead to their downfall.

Meanwhile, Cloud9 have seriously upgraded their roster. This is not the same Cloud9 from three months ago. The North American team was already full of strong CIS players. But now that it signed Denis “electroNic” Sharipov and Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy from Natus Vincere, its strength has become far greater.

Nobody knows at this point what C9 are capable of doing but this tournament and the upcoming events will probably prove to the community that they are a top 5 team at the very least.

In the second opening match of IEM Cologne’s playoffs, Heroic should prove capable of beating Astralis. Their defeat against ENCE in the upper bracket Final of group A was most likely a fluke. The third map score was 14-16.

Of course, it won’t be easy for Heroic to accomplish this. After all, Astralis have Nicolai “device” Reedtz, and managed to defeat Ninjas in Pyajamas, MOUZ, and even Natus Vincere in the group stage. But Casper “cadiaN” Moller’s team is still stronger at the moment.

Header: ESL