A Look at ESL Pro League Season 19: Preview and Predictions
Malta (PSF) - The ESL Pro League Season 19 kicks off this Tuesday with the first action coming from Group A with the subsequent groups starting in alphabetical order from B to D. The tournament boasts a total of 32 teams with some groups being more top heavy than others.
Group A starts off with two best of three matches those being Virtus.Pro vs Fnatic and 3DMAX vs SAW kicking off at 7:30 AM EST, and will be followed by Eternal Fire vs Astralis then FaZe vs Imperial. This group has multiple teams that participated in the last major like Eternal Fire, FaZe, Virtus.Pro, Imperial and SAW all playing at one of the stages during the major. The heavy favorites from this group are obviously Eternal Fire and FaZe with both making it to the main stage during the major and having strong showings on stage. Imperial or SAW could shake up the group a bit with an upset or two in the later rounds of the bracket but FaZe and Eternal Fire should be guaranteed locks. The only team that could contend for a spot with those teams is Virtus.Pro who just signed Denis “electroNic” Sharipov from Cloud9. Cloud9 would have been in this Group if electroNic had not left them unexpectedly making them be replaced by SAW.
Group B contains both of the Asian teams that qualified for the event with Mongolz and TYLOO starting off the group’s matches with their respective faceoffs. Vitality and G2 are going to be the heavy favorites in this group with all the other teams besides Mongolz and Falcons being unproven teams that have not had enough pro play to show us what their rosters are made of. Out of the rest of the teams, Mongolz are the other favorite of making it out of this group with them having a long history of upsets.
Group C is the last group that has multiple high-tier teams in it that could shake up brackets with how volatile some of the teams are in their recent performances. MOUZ is the best team in the group by a longshot with the only other teams coming close to them being FURIA, ENCE, GamerLegion and Liquid. All of these teams have disappointed in many of their recent showings with FURIA having some of the most underwhelming performances based on their roster. If I had to guess at the other team to make it out of this group I would put money on would be on Liquid.
Group D is probably the most underwhelming group out of them all with Group C being a close second. Natus Vincere is the only team that can be guaranteed to move forward with the rest of the teams being full of doubt on if they can compete with high-tier talent. Heroic could be thrown into the conversation as well, but Complexity has not looked good especially in the major where they underperformed in the Elimination Stage.
From each group four teams will make it to the next stage with the event lasting from Apr 23 to May 12 and taking place on the island nation of Malta.
All games will be streamed on the ESL Twitch and YouTube channels.
