Recap of ESL Pro League Season 19 Group Stage
The Group Stage of ESL Pro League Season 19 has finally concluded, and we now know the teams that advanced to the playoffs and their seedings in the bracket.
A total of four teams advanced from each of the four groups leaving 16 teams to make out the single elimination playoff bracket. The playoffs will start with BIG vs G2 and BetBoom vs FlyQuest followed by FaZe vs Monte and GamerLegion vs Virtus.pro.
The biggest surprises that made the playoffs are BIG and 3DMAX, two teams that have not been in many LAN events as of recent but are not very notable teams. 3DMAX especially surprised many going undefeated in the upper bracket of their group stage before falling to a strong Astralis who did not lose a single map in their run through the group stage. The two other teams that advanced from Group A would be FaZe and Virtus.pro.
Group B would go mostly as predicted by many people with Vitality, TheMongolz and G2 advancing with BetBoom advancing as well with just a series loss to Vitality. However, G2 had a hard road to getting their place in playoffs losing to M80 in the lower bracket before getting their revenge on them in the last chance stage to advance to playoffs. The biggest disappointment in Group B was the Falcons who could only get a series win against TYLOO losing the rest of their series even after adding Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen to the roster to try and get the project back on the ground. Their poor placement at pro league has raised more questions about the team and the future of their roster moving forward.
Group C was a toss-up between teams besides MOUZ the best team in the bracket and showed that by going through the entire bracket without dropping a map. The other teams that made it through from the group were GamerLegion, Liquid and Monte. Liquid had an impressive showing with a tight series versus FURIA only losing to MOUZ who were simply unstoppable in the group stage. ENCE and FURIA both had confusing showings with both having great series like ENCE vs Monte, but very bad showings with ENCE having a mediocre show out versus FURIA in the Last Chance Stage.
Group D was a lot more hectic with HEROIC being eliminated in the group stage after losing to both BIG and Ninjas in Pyjamas (NIP). Complexity and Natus Vincere both advanced like predicted, but Complexity upset the major winners in the final game of the upper bracket to get a quarter-final spot. FlyQuest (formerly known as Grayhound) would take the final spot from the Last Chance Stage.
You can watch all the games on ESL’s A and B Twitch streams.
