BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2021 group A preview
Aleksandar MiloshevichAfter a three-day break, tier-1 teams are coming back to the battlefield of another tournament. We will see the group stage of BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2021 in the next two weeks.
In this material, you can find the review of Group A, in which Astralis, Team Vitality, Team Liquid, and Evil Geniuses will participate. The teams will play by the Double Elimination system on September 16-18. The format of the matches is best-of-3. The top two teams of the group will receive spots in BLAST Premier: Fall Finals and the teams to place 3rd-4th will have to compete for one more time for getting to the final of the fall season in BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2021.
Evil Geniuses
The team is considered to be the obvious outsider of Group A and there are reasons for it. Let’s start with the team, which has the least expectations in the group — Evil Geniuses. The team has issues with the game during the whole year. EG’s best result at the tier-1 tournament is the 5th-6th place at IEM Summer 2021. Evil Geniuses were far from the final stages at the rest of the championships. The latest result to be remembered is the performance at ESL Pro League Season 14 where EG held the last place in their group and did not win a match. In five matches, Evil Geniuses managed to win Inferno against FaZe Clan with a score of 16 : 13, and also achieved victory in 14 rounds on the same map against Fnatic.
In addition to the team’s bad shape, Evil Geniuses announced on September 15 that two players will miss the tournament. The captain of the team — stanislaw who also did not help Evil Geniuses at ESL Pro League Season 14. Brehze will not play at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2021 too. Both players have asked for some time «to focus on their mental health».
They will be replaced by the coach of EG, daps, and also the Bulgarian SPELLAN who is a player of Mad Lions but he has been inactive since August 5. It is worth reminding that the coach of EG played at the past tournament with the HLTV 2.0 rating of 0.82. Four players performed worse than he did. In his turn, SPELLAN played two open qualifiers on the roster of Bulgarian mixes after he had been benched. Both qualifying tournaments were not successful for the fresh teams.
It is unlikely that these replacements will benefit Evil Geniuses and they can be considered the team to claim the last place in the group for a reason.
Astralis
After losing its most star player of the roster — device, the titled organization can’t return to its past level. Also, there are rumors during the long period of time that the coach of the team, zonic wants to leave the team almost after 5 years of being in the team, having taken a couple of players. The supposed coach who will have to replace him, HUNDEN, has recently become «the star» of the scandal of the information leakage from Heroic — the team he used to work for.
Gla1ve will miss the tournament due to the birth of his wife’s child. Xyp9x will stand in instead of him, he was benched during ESL Pro League Season 14 because Astralis signed the 18-years-old Lucky. The young player is a rising star of the Danish CS:GO. 1.12 is the player’s rate in 2021.
Despite the team placing 4th in the group of the 14th EPL season and will be playing as the renewed roster, the Danes will do everything possible to compete with Team Liquid and Team Vitality, at least, and to advance further instead of one of the teams at most. The team had 16 days to prepare for the tournament. Xyp9x wants to prove that he was benched for no reason and Lucky wants to prove that he is one of the most prospective players of Denmark, at least.
Team Liquid
Before IEM Cologne 2021, Team Liquid was almost not playing against the teams from Europe for a year and they tried to return to the top of the world Counter-Strike. The team was not able to proceed to the playoffs of the competition at the tournament in Germany but Liquid made a statement at the first championship after the summer break that they have found their play and are ready to return to the international stage.
It seems that it has become possible because the role of the captain is held by FalleN again and the team found «common ground» with adreN — the new coach who has replaced moses.
Team Liquid will probably want to prove that the loss of the thirtieth round of the third map against Heroic in the quarterfinal of EPL 14 was a sad accident and they had to fight against NAVI for a spot in the final of the tournament.
Team Vitality
The French team is the favorite of the group after the performance at ESL Pro League Season 14. The team and its main star ZyWoo did not stand out with their results until the final of the previous championship. After such a positive ending of 2020, the roster of the French organization was expected a lot in the new year. Nivera’s rate, the sixth player on the roster, dropped from 1,19 in 2020 to 0,93 at the beginning of 2021. Amid the unsatisfying performances at BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2021 and IEM Katowice 2021, the Belgian talent was benched.
Team Vitality had announced before BLAST Premier: Spring Showdown that the championship would have become the last one for RpK wearing the yellow-black jersey and it even became known at the end of August that the veteran of the French CS:GO decided to retire. His spot was taken by the unknown Kyojin.
Despite all these problems and replacements, the French not just had a rest during the mid-season period but prepared well for the first championship after their vacation. The second place at EPL 14 proves it. Despite the loss in the final match, Team Vitality did not look way weaker than Natus Vincere.
After the end of ESL Pro League 14, the team returned to the top five of the HLTV rating for the first time since March 8. The team will want to take hold of the list of the best teams in the world and fight for the titles. Will Team Vitality be able to achieve it? We will find out at the end of Group A at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2021.