PGL Antwerp Recap

Every half-year, 24 of the best CS:GO teams are flown to the ‘major’, which is an official event coordinated by Valve, the company that owns CS:GO, and have a chance to immortalize themselves inside of the esport’s history. This year the major was hosted by the tournament organizer, PGL, was held in Antwerp, Belgium, and was full of upsets, surprises, and storylines which will go down in counterstrike history.

When asked about what he thought about CS:GO majors, Robby B., a senior at AISG said, “I don’t really follow CS anymore because of how busy IB is, but I did watch the grand final VOD for Faze vs. Natus Vincere and the crowd was really strong in Antwerp.”

This major was full of diverse lineups with teams whose countries saw representation at the major for the first time. The Bad News Eagles (BNE) lineup was the first Kosovian CS:GO team to ever be in attendance of a major and surprised many by making it to the legends stage of the major. IHC was another team which had the chance to represent their home country of Mongolia for the first time on the big stage. However, they fell flat in the contender stage and went out 1-3.

As stated earlier, this major was full of surprises and upsets, with several teams entering the legends stage in an unexpected fashion. Previous Brazilian major winners Fnx, Fallen, and Fer attended the major with Fnx coming out of a 3-year retirement. The three Brazilian veterans’ abilities to perform was called into question due to their recent shaky results and age. However, the team continuously brought upset after upset.

Even after making it to the legends stage, many people were questioning the ability of the Imperial players. During the legends stage, Imperial would immediately be met by two swift losses against BIG (Berlin International Gaming) and G2. Afterwards, they would gain their first victory against BNE and go on to shock the world by beating Cloud9, proving many of their doubters wrong.

Unfortunately, they would go out of legends 2-3 after losing against Copenhagen Flames. This major, Imperial would show their ability to play fundamentally sound counterstrike and a deep and varied strat-book, showing the world that 30-year-olds could still play at the top level.

Meanwhile, Team Spirit would make an astonishingly deep run at the major while flying underneath everyone’s radar. Team Spirit is spearheaded by Chopper and a lineup of young Russian stars. After benching their star player, Mir, and veteran player, Sdy, the team would fall into irrelevancy and grind tier-two counterstrike during the first quarter of 2022.

Going into the major, nobody had expected Spirit to make it past contenders. However, they would manage to upset Astralis, Furia, Heroic, and Copenhagen Flames which are all currently ranked on HLTV as top 15 teams in the world. The Russian young guns would go on to make it into playoffs and lose in the semifinals with two extremely close matches against Faze.

Lastly, Faze Clan would finally succeed in winning its first major. After years of creating the theoretically strongest rosters CS:GO has had to offer, the organization has finally taken home its first trophy from a CS:GO major. Following the infamous choke against Cloud 9 in 2018 with the legendary lineup of Olofmeister, NiKo, Karrigan, Guardian, and Rain, Faze has not been in contention for a major title for several years. This was mostly due to COVID; however, the organization also did not field a Top 3 roster during the 3-year period as well.

Karrigan and Rain this time would not repeat their mistake in 2018 and were hungry to immortalize themselves within the game. While both players were not expected to perform well within the new star-studded Faze lineup with Broky, Twistzz, and Ropz, they would prove to be the stars of the show.

Karrigan would show his prowess as a player- boasting a positive rating of 1.01 despite being the entry and support of the team. Rain fielding similar roles would end the event at an astounding 1.24: he was the highest rated player at the event.

Billy B., a senior at AISG, was also surprised to see both Rain’s performances, stating, “I’m not really a fan of Faze clan or their players but Rain hard-carrying the team was not something I expected to see.”

PGL Antwerp has become one of the largest CS:GO events in history. The tournament boasted an in-person attendance of more than 20,000 fans during the Faze vs Na’vi grand-final, and a peak viewership of 2.1 million concurrent viewers online. Though the event did not reach the highs that PGL Stockholm had reached, it will go down in counter-strike history as a truly unforgettable tournament.