It’s only the second day of the PGL Major Antwerp 2022 and we already have 2 teams eliminated from the competition. And on the flip side, two teams have already qualified for the Legends Stage, where they will be facing the very best CSGO teams in the world.
During the opening day of the major, we saw two teams failing to secure a single game. Australian team Renegades was one of them, as they had to face ForZe and Eternal Fire, who on paper, are way better than Renegades. Although Renegades managed to have a decent game against ForZe, they got completely dismantled by the Turkish team Eternal Fire.
In the Swiss format, losing your first two games means that your next one will be an elimination match. Now Renegades had to face their fellow APAC representative IHC Esports. During the series, Renegades looked way better than the day before, but it still wasn’t enough. IHC 2-0’d Renegades and punched their ticket back to Australia.
The other participant that got eliminated was the first Argentinian team to ever qualify for a major in the history of CSGO, 9z Team. They had a very unlucky start where they had to face ENCE, a team considered top 5 in the world, meaning that they would have an uphill battle from the get-go.
9z Team actually didn’t perform badly, it’s just that having to face ENCE is a guaranteed defeat for almost every single team in the tournament. For their second match, they would play against Brazil’s MIBR, and 9z was just one round away from OT, but ultimately ended up losing to the Brazilian team. This meant that 9z was going to face NA’s Team Liquid in an elimination match. Sadly for the Argentinian fans, Team Liquid was in better form and defeated 9z, knocking them out of the tournament.
While these two teams were having a really rough time, some teams were dominating the competition. Team Vitality and X were those teams, as they didn’t lose a single match in the first two days of the event.
Team Vitality had an interesting run where they would open the event with a match against Complexity. This would be the first EU vs NA match of the event, and as expected, EU completely dominated their NA counterpart. Now the French team had to face Astralis, and they took them down with ease.
For their advancement match, Team Vitality had to face ForZe in a best-of-3. The series was very close and until the end, it could’ve been a victory for any team. ForZe started the series with a lead but Team Vitality bounced back after taking them down in game 2. The series ended in Vitality’s favor meaning that they secured a spot in the Legends Stage.
The other team that advanced was G2 Esports, who just like Vitality did, took down a North American team on their encounter. In their second match, G2 Esports had to take down Team Spirit, one of the strongest teams in the challengers stage. And although the game was extremely close, G2 ultimately won the match.
In their advancement match, G2 Esports faced ENCE, and even against a team like that one, G2 was looking like the stronger team. G2 dismantled ENCE in their game, which was played in dust2. ENCE evened out the score after taking down G2 Esports, but there was a huge difference on the manner they achieved this. After game 2, even if ENCE managed to win it, it was still looking like G2 was the favorite to win it all.
G2 Esports ended up taking the series home and guaranteeing themselves a spot in the Legends Stage. Now Ence and ForZe will have to play one more day in the Challengers Stage, although it’s safe to say that they’ll be the next ones advancing in the tournament.
