On July 5-10 Cologne will become a centre of attention for all the fans of competitive CS:GO. Once again Electronic Sports League are holding a Major event in the gaming capital of Germany, but for this time the prize pool went up to $1 000 000, which will motivate teams to show their best. Thanks to confident performance of our team at qualifiers we got a chance to participate in such a significant tournament. Our first rivals are teams from Group A: Astralis, Сounter Logic Gaming and Team Dignitas. We have already met with Astralis and CLG at Columbus Major, but unfortunately our intense fight ended with them advancing to play-offs.

Danish stars:

 Finn “karrigan” Andersen
 Lucas “gla1ve” Rossander
 Nicolai “device” Reedtz
 Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen
 Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth

Our main rivals in the group are these five Danish guys from Astralis. This team honored its name with confident performance on numerous tournaments all over the world. They were not satisfied with losing to Na’Vi in the semifinals of the last Major and decided to make some roster changes. They exchanged with Team Dignitas, acquiring new talent Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye, but losing strong and consistent René “cajunb”  Borg. However, after these changes the results haven’t gotten better - actually they became even worse. Because of Kjaerbye participating at ESL One Qualifiers with his old team, Astralis will have to play with a substitute, Lucas “gla1ve” Rossander, which may have a negative impact on the morale of the team.

CLG, who lost their main power:

 Kenneth “koosta” Suen
 Tarik “tarik” Celic
 Stephen “reltuC” Cutler
 James “Hazed” Cobb
 Faruk “pita” Pita

After advancing to play-offs at Columbus Major, they faced some problems: players couldn’t find their synergy, their games looked like a matchmaking of two groups of players. Jacob "FugLy" Medina was the first who got finally sick of bad team atmosphere. He was temporarily substituted by Faruk “pita” Pita, a veteran of competitive CS and a coach of the team, whose playstyle influenced the teamplay a lot. A bit later CLG exchanged players with Team Liquid: Joshua “jdm64” Marzano left for TL, while Kenneth “koosta” Suen joined CLG.

Between the Majors CLG had a couple of unlucky tournaments - the team failed to advance from the group stages of DreamHack Masters Malmö and DreamHack Austin, and didn’t manage to qualify for the finals of the American part of ECS. Their only success was at ELEAGUE, where they advanced to the finals of the group stage play-offs, lost to Astralis but got to the qualifiers for the last chance spot.

Not-that-dark horse named Dignitas:

 René  “cajunb” Borg
 Ruben “RUBINO” Villarroel
 Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke
 Jesper “tenzki” Mikalski
 Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen

The next organization is the one that discovered the current roster of Astralis, and now they promote new talent. At the beginning of the year the team was in top-10 best teams in the world, but gradually fell off. After exchanging kjaerbye for cajunb, the team improved its tactics and shone again at qualifiers in Poland. This Major will be a significant event for some of the players that will show if the team became better or is still an underdog. Their performance at the group stage of ELEAGUE wasn’t that positive - they managed to win against TSM, but in the very first match of the play-offs were taken over by FaZe Clan, losing their opportunity to get to the last chance qualifiers. Although many people are underestimating Team Dignitas, it is them who can upset Astralis in their first game in Cologne.

Commentary of our coach:
"Again in the same group with Astralis and CLG. We are dying to play against Counter Logic Gaming, we want to take revenge for our loss at Columbus Major. Our guys are ready to fight."

Schedule of Group A matches for July 5th:
11:00 CEST  Astralis vs  Team Dignitas
12:15 CEST  Gambit vs  Counter Logic Gaming