PGL Copenhagen Major: Elimination Stage Thoughts and Recap

The Elimination Stage has concluded and the final eight teams that will play on the main stage to fight for a chance at winning the first Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) Major. The Elimination Stage gave us a lot more questions than answers about not only the teams that eliminated from the major but also those that advanced to the Playoffs Stage.

The teams that qualified for the playoffs stage and that will be playing on the main stage are MOUZ, Spirit, Natus Vincere (NAVI), G2, Vitality, Eternal Fire, FaZe, and Cloud9. Cloud9, Spirit, NAVI and Eternal Fire have been the most impressive teams so far to me that have come out of the Elimination Stage.

Vitality, FaZe and G2 have not impressed me at all during this major with MOUZ being somewhere in the middle of having good showings against Complexity, but struggling against teams like ECSTATIC and Eternal Fire.

G2 only had one dominant game against FURIA with the rest of their matches showing the lack of proper team play and coordination against teams that this roster should be beating easily. G2 was cruising against ECSTATIC on the decider map Anubis being up 10-4 before nearly collapsing losing three straight rounds and piecing three rounds together at the end to avoid elimination.

Vitality who won the last major have looked shaky at times and did not impress me losing their first game against Eternal Fire and nearly losing Nuke against the MongolZ to avoid going 0-2 after the first day of play. Vitality would beat Imperial in a best of one and Complexity in a best of three to qualify for the playoffs. They nearly lost against all their opponents in the Elimination Stage which is not a good sign of a team that many predicted would win the major again. The best of three against Complexity was the biggest sign that the team was not competing on their usual level. Complexity was coming off an embarrassing showing against MOUZ that beat them 2-0 with Complexity only getting three rounds in two maps.

FaZe were a unanimous 3-0 pick by many players in their Elimination Stage pick-ems. Instead they lost their first game against Heroic before beating FURIA to stay in the 1-1 bracket. Their worst performance came against Eternal Fire where they got trounced 13-1 and it was nothing short of an absolute domination by Eternal Fire. They still pulled through making it out of elimination by beating both Imperial and Complexity. Their performance against Complexity was much better than Vitality’s showing that FaZe has been slowly returning to form, but I find it too little too late for any real push towards the major especially with them facing Spirit in the quarter-finals.

The quarter-finals start on Thursday at 12:00 PM EST on the PGL Twitch channel.