Team Liquid’s unexpected success and FaZe Clan’s failure. BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024 results
The era of franchise leagues in Counter-Strike 2 is slowly but surely coming to an end. BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 will be the last tournament in the series before the transition to a new system with invitations by rating from Valve in 2025. As always, slots for the BLAST Premier finals are played out at a separate tournament BLAST Premier: Fall Groups in the format of four groups and six slots for all teams. The championship is still one of the first after the players’ summer vacation, so the results were unexpected, but the favorites in the face of G2 Esports, Team Vitality, Team Spirit, Natus Vincere and Astralis made it to the last Fall Final. The only unexpected participant in the main event was Team Liquid, in whose new roster no one believed at all from the moment it was announced. In this article, we will discuss the results of BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024, as well as the teams that failed their performance.
Team Liquid has assembled a good roster?
Team Liquid’s decision to sign sniper Roland ultimate Tomkowiak from the tier-2 scene immediately caused a lot of criticism and misunderstanding from the community, but at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024, the team and the player himself proved that this decision was not a mistake. The newcomer showed excellent statistics and did not drop out of the game, and Team Liquid managed to beat Virtus.pro and twice dealt with the top-1 team in the world – Natus Vincere. After the second victory, we can definitely say that this result was not an accident, but it is still necessary to follow the team over a distance, this may just be a successful honeymoon with new players. But already now this Team Liquid roster looks stronger than the team with Casper cadiaN Meller.
Stable G2 Esports
G2 Esports also showed a good result. The team twice closed down Ninjas in Pyjamas without a chance and defeated FaZe Clan. The previous G2 Esports roster, although achieving some results, could never be called stable, the team could lose to any outsider or even fail to perform at a major championship, but under the leadership of Janusz Snax Pogorzelski, the team no longer makes such mistakes and is a full-fledged world grandee on the tier-1 stage and one of the contenders for the top-1. G2 Esports will clearly have a huge chance of winning BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 and other important championships.
Team Spirit – good even without a coach
HEROIC was unable to perform at full strength at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024, as Abdul degster Gasanov was unable to obtain a visa, and had to play with coach Eetu sAw Saha. But this is not the only case at the tournament, the coach of one of the main favorites, Team Spriit, Sergey hally Shavaev, was also unable to get to the venue. Even without their coach, the team managed to beat OG, HEROIC and Complexity, but the team had big problems in the last series. There is no point in worrying about Team Spirit now, it was just hard for the team to completely manage the game on their own and not receive support from the coach during tactical pauses.
Team Vitality is back in the game
BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024 was also an important test for Team Vitality. If the team had failed even in the BLAST groups, they would have definitely needed replacements. At the tournament, the team had problems with GamerLegion, but still won, and then dealt with Astralis twice. It was not the easiest path, but the team got its slot at Fall Final 2024. Team Vitality will still have a hard time competing with the strongest teams, but it has some chances at the finals.
Teams that made it through Play-in
In BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024, the teams had the right to make a few mistakes. The last two slots for the finals were played out in the Play-In stage, where the teams that took second place in the groups got in. It was extremely unexpected to see Natus Vincere here, who were clearly one of the main favorites for a slot, but Team Liquid’s two losses did not go unnoticed. It was not difficult for the champions of the last major to pass Play-In, their opponents were Complexity, and the meeting ended with a score of 2:0. The second slot went to Astralis, who also failed to cope with Team Vitality twice. The Danes were stronger than Ninjas in Pyjamas and deservedly advanced to BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024.
Failure of the favorites and prospects of the new Cloud9 roster
Three teams failed at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024, from which the community expected better results. If there were still some doubts about the new Cloud9 roster, then almost everyone was confident in the passage of Virtus.pro and FaZe Clan to Fall Final 2024. FaZe’s tournament didn’t go according to plan from the very beginning, in the first game the new Cloud9 roster was able to impose a serious fight and almost won the match, and in the match with G2 Esports no one expected a victory from the Finn karrigan Andersen roster, but the team managed to take one map, however, after that they had a disgusting game with Ninjas in Pyjamas, where the players did not show their best and lost with a score of 0:2, leaving BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024.
After a fairly successful debut against FaZe Clan, Cloud9 immediately began to expect some kind of high result in their first tournament, but the team was still just getting together and was not yet ready for this. In the second match, Kirill Boombl4 Mikhailov’s team still could not cope with Ninjas in Pyjamas and went to the Showdown. Even despite being eliminated from the tournament, Cloud9 showed a good game and definitely have prospects in the future, but they need more practice and teamwork, and the result should be expected in a few tournaments.
Virtus.pro failed the most at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024. After Esports World Cup 2024, the team was expected to show the same quality performance at the next tournament, but here the team did absolutely nothing. If Team Liquid’s defeat can still be justified after the success of their opponents against Natus Vincere, the team definitely should not have lost to BIG. In any case, it is too early to draw conclusions and we need to watch Virtus.pro’s performance at IEM Cologne 2024.
BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024 brought a lot of emotions and sensations to the audience, and this was only a qualifying tournament for the main show – Fall Final 2024. The teams that failed will still have a chance to get a slot in the Showdown, but the problem is that there are only two of them, and the composition of opponents is as dense as possible and many teams have a chance. Only the strongest teams will be at the last autumn BLAST finals, which means that the tournament will be even more interesting than Fall Groups, but before that we still have to watch IEM Cologne 2024, the qualifiers for RMR, of course, BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2024 itself and several other major championships. The last season of franchise leagues promises to be extremely interesting.
BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024 results:
Qualified to BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 – Team Liquid, G2 Esports, Team Vitality, Team Spirit, Natus Vincere and Astralis.
Fell to BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2024 – Complexity, Ninjas in Pajamas, BIG, FaZe Clan, Falcons, HEROIC, Virtus .pro, Cloud9, GamerLegion and OG.