Potential Turned Reality: FaZe Clan Defeats Team Liquid in ESL One New York Finals

Electronic Sports League One in New York was the second tournament in the ongoing CS: GO season. We have witnessed a rise of G2 eSports and North in DreamHack tournament which took place in Malmö. Neither of these two teams showed up in New York, providing space for rest of the teams to show their full potential.

SK Gaming, Natus Vincere,  Cloud9, Astralis, FaZe Clan, and Team Liquid all provided a great battle among themselves to prove their status and improve their reputation in the exciting eSports scene, and eventually win the title. Team Astralis and SK Gaming were marked as favorites but eventually ended up being swept away by the uprising teams. It was the time for FaZe and Team Liquid to reveal themselves to the elite and emerge on a more challenging competition scene.

Team Liquid Rise Setting the Scene

Liquid stared their climb to the top before New York, reaching the finals the in ESG tournament in Mykonos, after beating SK Gaming in semifinals. It was a great performance, but ultimately they lost in the finals from mousesports. Even though no one from the other teams managed to achieve such result, what Team Liquid demonstrated was no fluke.

Their game style changes seem to fit in nicely, after having Nicholas a.k.a. nitr0 Cannella taking on the team leader role. Simultaneously, having the main core quartet of Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken, Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski, and Joshua “jdm64” Marzano perform on a peak level just helped the teams’ potential to come out swinging.

Some doubts persisted for the lineup, especially as to whether they can repeat the same success from the older events, reaching a goal that Liquid could never reach? Their run started in the group B with FaZe, Virtus.Pro and Astralis. They lost the first game against Astralis, but it seems the defeat only made them stronger.

They managed to win against Virtus.Pro and beat Astralis in the rematch, in a match where they showed a new, superb performance. They came to play off-stage, where they countered SK Gaming. In three maps: Inferno, Overpass and Cobblestone, Team Liquid showed their amazing teamwork and will. After winning on Inferno, losing on Overpass, and snatching the victory on Cobblestone, they managed to go through to the finals, with the best-of-three system.

Finals between Faze and Liquid

FaZe is considered a superstar team, having an international mix of talented players like team’s captain Finn “karrigan” Andersen, Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer, Havard “rain” Nygaard,  Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs, and Nikola “NiKo” Kovac.

Despite being a dominant force on the paper, everyone was rather suspicious about players’ roles. But, in the New York grand finale, „karrigan“ proved himself as a great in-game leader. He figured out how to make his team perform on a peak level, by assigning the team members in most efficient way, and the results were amazing.

FaZe dominated the finals as they entirely destroyed Team Liquid with an amazing score of 3-0. Team Liquid just could not handle the pressure and could not find its game style. Although Liquid brutally lost in the finals, they still have a lot of room to develop as a lineup. However, Liquid is still considered as one of best teams in the competition.

To wrap it up, New York ESL was an astonishing event, having favorites SK Gaming and Astralis losing from underdogs Liquid, the team that showed a great potential and proved themselves to the gaming world as one of the upa and coming teams, bringing even more competition to the already highly competitive world of CS:GO.