The second Counter-Strike major of 2016 is almost upon us. For the third year running, ESL One Cologne will play host to CS:GO's premier competition, which features 16 teams vying for the lion's share of a $1 million prize pool.
Eight Legends, those that placed in the top eight at MLG Columbus, and eight Challengers, teams that qualified for Cologne, have been sorted into four groups that will begin play July 5 in the Lanxess-Arena.
The months since MLG Columbus have seen a shakeup in terms of the hierarchy of CS:GO. We've witnessed the birth of a new era in the game, and with it, a new paradigm of greatness. The battles fought at Cologne will not just be in the minutiae of what happens within the server, but will also be clashes of legacy between the teams.
Living Legends
The newly christened SK Gaming squad enters as defenders of the title. Since winning Columbus as Luminosity Gaming, the team has won two more tournaments and reached the finals in a third. This impressive run has solidified the team's standing as the best in the world; no other squad has been playing at this level in recent months. Not one to be complacent, SK has been undergoing boot camp in Europe for some time now in preparation for the major.
This tournament is a chance for the squad to build a legacy. Having already won a major and achieved what was previously unthinkable, Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo and his band of Brazilians are yet again on the cusp of greatness, but with victory they could enter into the pantheon of the best teams to ever play the game. With a target on its back and a veritable group of death awaiting it, SK must overcome its toughest test yet to truly ascend.
One of the teams standing firmly in SK's path, and one of the teams that is already in the conversation to be the best of all time, is the Swedes from Fnatic. However, the team's run at Columbus was a disappointing one, and evaluation in the interim does not lead to kind critiques. With semifinal finishes in both ESL Pro League and Esports Championship Series (ECS), it appears as if the dominant days of Fnatic are behind it.
Nonetheless, historically Fnatic has matched up well against the Brazilians, with many series wins over them in early 2016. The return of Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer is a promising sign. Regarded as the best player in the world before his injury, his reincorporation to the team brings with it a certain swagger that is the hallmark of Fnatic's play. This tournament will also be the first in more than two years in which Fnatic isn't a near-consensus favorite to win. Free of undue expectations and reinvigorated by the return of its superstar, Fnatic could play spoiler to SK's dreams of a second major title.
Once rivals to Fnatic and two-time major champions themselves, the French team EnVyUs also comes into Cologne looking to return to former glory. To say 2016 has been an underwhelming year for the previously elite team is a bit of an understatement. It went from winning the final major at Dreamhack Cluj-Napoca in 2015 to bombing out of Columbus in groups; the shocking fall from grace has been the impetus for change within the structure of the team.
With a retooled focus on star AWPer Kenny "kennyS" Schrub, EnVy aims to at least regain Legend status at Cologne with a playoff berth. Its group draw looks somewhat favorable, as it faces a Virtus.Pro team it recently dispatched at ELeague along with two middle-of-the-pack squads in Team Liquid and mousesports. EnVy's chance to return to the top starts here; displaying dominance over this group would be a fitting start.
Something to prove
The third team in the group of death with Fnatic and SK is the resurgent French side Gamers2. With a 2-3 loss to FalleN & Co. in the ESL Pro League grand final, followed by a 2-0 win over them in the Esports Championship Series Season 1 grand final, G2 is the only team that has proved it has the ability to match the Brazilians. Its form of late has been brilliant behind the stars of the team, Richard "shox" Papillon and Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom.
Two of G2's players have previous major titles, but the team as a whole comes in with a chip on its shoulder. Not so long ago, G2 had been counted out as a team capable of winning a title, but a recent hot streak has it shooting up the global rankings and garnering many a fan with the flashy play of shox and ScreaM. This team's sights are set no lower than winning the $500,000 first-place prize, but it must first survive the group-stage onslaught awaiting it at Lanxess.
Earlier in the year, Natus Vincere was in contention for the spot that SK Gaming now holds. Before Columbus, it had beaten the Brazilians with regularity, but lost a battle of will in the finals at Columbus to fall just short of taking home the prize. Since then, the team has been quiet on the international stage due to Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács' latent injury and failures to qualify for the LAN finals of the biggest leagues.
Columbus is a chance for Na'Vi to prove it has what it takes to be the best. Surely, it has the talent to match any of its rivals with GuardiaN and Egor "flamie" Vasilyev leading the way. Its grinding, patient, terrorist-side tactics and facilitation of its star-AWPer closely resembles SK's play, and it could be said that Na'Vi was the progenitor of this style before the round-time changes brought it to the forefront. Still, the question remains, does Na'Vi have the team cohesion and mental fortitude to win a major?
Final thoughts
There are many other teams in contention at Cologne, but these five all come in with something more at stake than simply earning sticker money and having a good showing. The majors are the biggest stages in Global Offensive, the tournaments that immortalize moments, the pages upon which Legends are recorded. A lot of focus will be on the new SK with the veteran Brazilians, but a surging EnVyUs and revitalized Fnatic could pose problems.