G2 Esports and Virtus.pro Are Unrecognizable – What Really Happened at EPL

G2 Esports and Virtus.pro were supposed to be the favorites in Group B of ESL Pro League Season 14. The opponents they had to face were not even in the top 10 and 3 victories would have been sufficient to advance to the Playoffs. How, then, was it possible for both of them to get eliminated? And how did G2 manage to lose 5 consecutive matches at such a low competitive level?

G2’ Failure at ESL Pro League Season 14

G2 entered ESL Pro League Season 14 with an amazing track record. The team had finished in the top 4 at its previous 6 tournaments and was the Grand Finalist of IEM Cologne. In the analysts’ eyes, these results meant that winning Group B of EPL S14 was going to be a walk in the park. Because who could have stopped them, apart from Virtus.pro? There was no one in that group that looked capable of defeating them.

OG was decent and its global rank was 14^th. But compared to G2 (ranked 3^rd), they were nothing. Complexity looked even worse. Their rank (18^th) wasn’t giving them any chance against NiKo’s squad.

As for the other two, forZe and Sinners, they were not even in the same league as the French squad. Despite their presence in the top 20, the results clearly indicated a massive skill difference. And yet, despite having every statistic in their favor, G2 lost every single match. Was this a fluke? Did they enter the tournament unprepared?

A Possible Explanation

With so many cheating and match-fixing scandals plaguing CS:GO, some people might start creating conspiracies about this incident. Because it’s quite rare to see something like this. The term black swan does not even begin to do justice to what we witnessed.

After G2’s success at IEM Cologne and the seemingly weak opposition in their group, it would be understandable if preparation wasn’t as thorough as it could have been. At the same time, the other 4 squads’ hunger and wide range of research material about G2 gave them an edge.

To say that G2’s players took it easy would be a step too far as they are professionals, but the player break was long and getting back into the groove proves harder than it seems sometimes. Seeing that Complexity had to field a standin (“natosaphix”) and ForZe was just a replacement for Renegades with equally short time to prepare, there is no excuse for G2 to lose against them. Let’s see how the French squad will fare in their next event.

Virtus.pro

Virtus.pro is not a permanent partner team, so there’s no reason to assume that they felt obligated to participate in the tournament. But even though their results were significantly better than G2’s, their preparation was not sufficient to earn them a Playoffs spot. Of course, there’s also the possibility that OG, forZe, and Complexity are just better teams, but that’s unlikely.

Future tournaments will let us know what might have happened here. If G2 and VP all of a sudden become their former selves again and start winning even against the best teams in the world, the answer will be obvious. The two teams were either exhausted after IEM Cologne or simply underestimated their opponents and didn’t spend enough time analyzing their games. But if they keep on losing and getting poor results, then we may have a much bigger problem. One that is likely to be followed by roster changes.

 

Photo credit: IEM|Helena-Kristiansson