Watch live in Areena and participate in the CS:GO Major chat in Areena!
Sunday 21 May 2023 will go down in history as the day the last world championship of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive video game will be decided. In the finals of the major tournament in Paris, two teams of European players will meet: GamerLegion and Team Vitality.
will broadcast the final match live at Areena and E-sport on the Twitch.tv channel (you will switch to another service). The live broadcast starts at 17:30 and the first part at 18:00.
Who is the top-fragger of the first map of the final?
In the last competition of the majors, the top scorer of the opening map of the final match is sought, i.e. the player who collects the most frags.
A E-sport gaming mouse mat will be drawn among those who hit the right player and the number of drops! If there are no correct answers, the prize will be drawn between the correct player and those who guessed the closest correct reading.
The bet can be sent until the start of the match. You can only participate once and it requires logging in with a ID. NOTE! Bets made with uninformed nicknames will not be taken into account!
GamerLegion surprised everyone by going all the way
The composition of the German organization GamerLegion was completely unknown to many CS:GO viewers just a couple of months ago. The team was only ranked 33rd in the HLTV ranking when the European major qualifiers kicked off at the beginning of April. The team is not part of the partner teams of either of the biggest tournament organizers, ESL or BLAST, so outside of the Majors, they are rarely seen fighting against the most famous esports organizations.
On the Major tour, the lack of partnerships hasn’t hurt. When GamerLegion has been able to show its skills against the best in the world, it has not missed the opportunity. Already last fall, the team knocked out top team G2 from the Rio major qualifiers. GL also made it to the tournament, but at that time the fresh lineup was not yet ready to succeed. The trip was cut short already to the first group stage, i.e. the Challengers Stage.
In Paris, the Challengers Stage started with two losses, but playing with their backs against the wall, GL dropped out of the tournament, e.g. Rio Majors semi-final team MOUZ and eventually advanced to the next stage. In the second group stage, the Legends Stage, GL lost their opening match to one of the pre-favorites, Natus Vincere, but with three consecutive victories, the playoff spot was released without breaking a sweat.
Winning the opening round of the playoffs against Monte from Ukraine wasn’t a big shock yet, but in the semifinals, GL knocked out Heroic, perhaps the biggest pre-favorite of the tournament. Earlier, everything had looked set for a dream final between Heroic and Vitality, the number one and two in the HLTV world rankings.
The 23-year-old Romanian star player of GamerLegion and especially the team Ivan “iM” Mihai however, decided otherwise. After three maps, the Danes were bitterly disappointed as GamerLegion celebrated their place in the finals.
Based on the Rating 2.0 scale of the HLTV website, iM has been the best player of the tournament with a rating of 1.44. In the playoff matches against Monte and Heroic, iM was completely unstoppable, and Vitality will have a hard time keeping the hits under control.
The Romanian is the strongest candidate for the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, especially if he can repeat his previous performances against Vitality as well.
Can Vitality withstand the pressure of the pre-favorite in front of the home crowd?
Vitality is deservedly at the top of the HLTV ranking, as the team won the tough IEM Rio tournament just a month ago. The French organization has in its lineup one of the best players in the history of the game, who has so far been without a Major win: the 22-year-old AWP player Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut.
Herbaut has twice been selected as the best player in the world in the annual player ranking of the HLTV publication. Twice he has been second to the Ukrainian Oleksand “s1mple” Kostylevin behind. ZywOo has played practically his entire professional career in Vitality since the end of 2018, reaching the quarterfinals in Major tournaments at best. However, the curse of the playoffs has now been broken thanks to the support of the home crowd.
Vitality’s road to the tournament included one match loss in April’s Major qualifiers, but with a good enough qualifying result, the team was able to start directly from the second group stage. With the experience of three major winners, Vitality has not lost a single card in the tournament yet.
Based on HLTV’s rating scale, Vitality’s best player has, as expected, been ZywOo, who has been pulling the team like a rock behind him for years. This time, ZywOota has been significantly helped by an Israeli player who moved from Finnish ENCE to Vitality last summer Lotta “Spinx” Gilad. The duo’s Rating 2.0 readings of 1.36 (ZywOo) and 1.22 (Spinx) are the second and fourth best ratings of the tournament.
When Heroic didn’t even make it to the finals, Vitality is being put in the huge boots of the pre-favourite. For the intoxicatingly loud home crowd, only the championship is good, and the team’s French players ZywOo and Dan “apEX” Madesclaire know it very well.
Last tournament, new winner
With the final played at the Bercy arena in Paris, a significant chapter in the history of Counter-Strike will be closed. The Global Offensive version released in August 2012 will go down in history this summer, when the game maker Valve releases a Counter-Strike 2 game version built with a new game engine. The new version will probably replace its ten-year-old predecessor in top-level tournaments immediately after its release, but the first Major tournament of the new game will not be seen until the spring of 2024 in Copenhagen.
Dane playing for Vitality Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen is the only player to play in every 19 Major tournaments. He has a chance to become the only player to win five Major championships. As organizations, both GamerLegion and Vitality are still without a Major win, so one more team name will be added to the list of CS:GO Major winners.
Can GamerLegion take down two giants in two days? And will Vitality be able to utilize the energy provided by the home crowd, or will it turn against them? On Sunday night in Paris, you might see the overflowing joy of the home crowd, or the worst possible disappointment when the underdog beats their favorite.
The last CS:GO Major final can be watched on Areena and E-eruhitu’s Twitch channel today, Sunday 21 May 2023, from 17:30. They will explain the final match Arttu “Olvari” Hämäläinen and Kalle “gaLezki” Kareinen. In Areena’s chat, an expert opinion is served on the other hand Kristo Lindfors.