The Disappointing and Surprising Teams of Day One of Opening Stage at PGL Copenhagen Major 2024

The first day of the PGL Copenhagen Major Opening Stage has concluded and to say the first day was hectic would be an understatement. Everyone’s pick-ems are in shambles, and it seems like it may be another Paris Major situation where everyone will be finishing with Silver Coins. There have been many surprising and disappointing teams showing themselves already after only one day of play, some are expected while others are shocking fans and making many in the community rethink their ranking of them in the scene overall.

FURIA Esports

FURIA being led by Brazilian legend Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo have once again disappointed fans in a major setting by falling to the 0-2 bracket and face elimination on the second day of play. Both of their losses have come against two of the worst rated teams in the entire major first losing to Legacy, and then losing in embarrassing fashion to Lynn Vision. For a team that is supposed to be number one when it comes to the South American region they seem to falter every single time they hit a major stage. The loss to Legacy was a close one with Legacy being able to rally behind young star talent and veteran leadership of another Brazilian legend Marcelo “coldzera” David. However, the same cannot be said about their loss to Lynn Vision on Nuke.

FURIA would go down 8-4 on the Counter-terrorist (CT) side against a Lynn Vision Terrorist (T) side that floundered and flopped against Heroic only gaining three total round wins on their T side in their first matchup. FURIA would then lose the first three rounds in the second half before securing four quick round wins in a row. This would put the score at 11-4 in Lynn Vision’s favor with them only needing two more round wins to take the map and the series victory.

FURIA would proceed to then lose two embarrassing rounds to Lynn Vision both of which came against an Eco from Lynn Vision. (An Eco is when your team does not buy any guns and will only spend money on utility or armor in an attempt to save money and reset your economy.) These two losses have caused FURIA fans to riot with some fans calling for the disbanding of the team entirely if they are kicked out of the tournament 0-3. FURIA has spent a lot of money on their roster with FalleN alone having a salary of $700,000 and their amazing start of 2024 has quickly come to an extreme pitfall.

FURIA is slated to face-off against Movistar KOI in their elimination match at 1:00 PM EST in an attempt to keep their major hopes alive.

Imperial

Imperial came out of day one of competition as the best South American team with their impressive performances against Heroic and ENCE.

Imperial would take ENCE to triple overtime winning the map Anubis with a final score of 22-19. The best performer of the match was Kaiky “noway” Santos finishing the match with a final rating of 1.41 and 94.9 Average Damage per Round (ADR). Their matchup against ENCE was one of the greatest best of one (BO1) that I have personally ever watched with insane clutches coming out from both sides.

Imperial would advance and face Heroic on Mirage taking them to overtime as well. This time it did not end in a victory for Imperial losing in overtime 14-16, but their performance was still a great step for a roster that had many doubts from Brazilian Counter-Strike fans. This map Imperial had a huge performance with another one of their young talents Lucas “decenty” Bacelar.

Imperial was put into a tough situation after FalleN and Marcelo “chelo” Cespedes both left for FURIA leaving the in-game leader (IGL) Vinicius “VINI” Figueiredo in a tough situation. VINI was brought in to learn under FalleN and with his departure of their two best players Imperial had to bring up a new young roster to now challenge their former teammates in their region. Imperial brought in two veteran players from Brazil in Henrique “HEN1” Teles who played in the finals at Krakow in 2017 for Immortals, and João “felps” Vasconcellos who won ESL One Cologne 2017 with SK Gaming. These two additions have helped in keeping the teams mental during games in check and not allowing the team to doubt themselves when they go down during games.

Lynn Vision

Lynn Vision have performed well for a roster hailing from the Asian region. The top dog of the region Mongolz have looked 50/50 so far in the two games that they played and are already in contention for elimination on day two. However, no one would have thought Lynn Vision making it out of day one with a 1-1 record with them having the most 0-3 predictions placed on them in the pick-ems.

While their first match against Heroic did not look well the score could have been much closer if Lynn Vision finished rounds off, but this is an extremely young team with most of their players being aged 20 and below. Teams from the Asian region always have unique playstyles with Lynn Vision having an extremely aggressive and in your face playstyle that can either work perfectly or cause a snowball effect of consistent losing streaks making them fall down by major margins.

We saw this playstyle work to the greatest we have seen since the Mongolz fought tooth and nail against Heroic at IEM Cologne 2023. The Asian scene is by far the smallest region in professional CS with many other games taking its player base like League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Overwatch 2. This has caused the scene to evolve in its own small echo chamber with the teams from that region not having many international matches under their belt and in their catalog.

Many CS fans hope for an Asian team to make it far in a major and this is no exception with many fans showing their support for Lynn Vision and especially Mongolz in this major.

The games will resume tomorrow at 8:00 AM EST on PGL’s A Twitch and B Twitch streams.