The Best Players to Follow at the WePlay Academy Finals

The Academy League has provided us with lots of action during the player break in August. Now, four teams are heading to the offline Finals taking place in Kyiv. There, we’ll see which players have the potential to advance to bigger rosters.

The four teams bring quite a few known faces to the server. The German scene is represented well by BIG, but mouz NXT and fnatic Rising feature some German talent as well. Jon “JDC” de Castro and David “prosus” Hesse have at least some international experience.

FINALS WITHOUT M0NESY

Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov was the standout player of the regular season. His 1.65 rating towers above all the other players and he’s dominated his opposition masterfully. The fact that he’s on the Natus Vincere academy team makes the analogy to Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev even better. But unfortunately, they share another important feature: Their teams can’t keep up. NaVi Junior failed to qualify for the Finals – despite the incredible performances on the part of m0NESY. They bombed out in the very last match of the Play-Ins versus fnatic.

THE BEST PLAYERS OF THE ACADEMY LEAGUE

So we won’t see the league’s top talent perform live. But at least Iulian “regali” Harjău will take part. The Romanian delivered a 1.25 rating and was the best player on the fnatic Rising camp. Dorian “xertion” Berman couldn’t fully keep up with that, but the entire mouz NXT squad posted great results.

But the Ninjas are the strongest and most consistent force. All five of their players rank within the Top 8 and Erik “ztr” Gustafsson is the “worst” player with a 1.14 rating. But NiP still didn’t make first place, as the mouz boys snatched that award from them.

The fnatic academy team can’t really hold a candle to the rest. They had to go all the way through the Play-Ins and only narrowly set themselves on top of NaVi Young. But things will be different on LAN anyways. Players like JDC should have the upper hand because they’ve been to offline events before. Under the pressure, some newcomers might struggle to perform like they did during the online stage of the WePlay Academy League.

Since mousesports were allowed to pick their opponents, the BIG Academy players immediately have to go up against the tournament favorites. This encounter between the German team and JDC’s troops will surely be exciting to watch. But the Swedish derby should be tense as well, even though fnatic aren’t really on the level of the Young Ninjas. After these Opening Matches take place, we’ll witness the rest of the Double Elimination bracket unfold. We’ll finally find out which teams can reach the Grand Finals and bring the first Academy League trophy home.