eSports

Astralis beat FaZe to secure ESL Pro League Season 19 Playoffs

April 25, 2024

We’re a couple of days into Groups A and B at ESL Pro League Season 19, and we’re already seeing some top Counter-Strike being played. We’ve seen 12 games of action so far across the two days, and we wanted to catch you up on the key moments that you need to know so far.

Astralis beat FaZe again to reach Playoffs

Credit: ESLCS on X.

This is become quite the contest between these two teams. After beating each other once apiece at IEM Chengdu 2024, Astralis and FaZe went head to head again at ESL Pro League Season 19. This time around, it was for a guaranteed spot in the Playoffs, with Astralis coming out as victors here. It’s another step forward for dev1ce IGL era, which seems a little more than just a honeymoon period at this point.

The positives don’t really stop for this Astralis lineup. Staehr is showing exactly why he was kept over Buzz during the roster shake-up last year, and stavn and jabbi look every bit the star players they were purchased to be. Then there’s br0, who continues to put in solid performances in a tough support role. The only question mark remains this team’s ability to do it in Playoffs, and that’s exactly what we’ll see from the team later in this tournament.

First, though, Astralis will face 3DMAX to find out whether they’ll start from the Round of 12 or the Quarter Finals of ESL Pro League Season 19.

Falcons fail again

Credit: ESLCS on X.

BOROS, s1mple, dupreeh. It doesn’t seem to matter who you plug in as the fifth player of this Falcons lineup. There’s something fundamentally wrong with this roster at the moment, and it’s just not working. Today, it was TheMongolZ who managed to take them down in three maps, including a dominant Mirage (13:3) that thoroughly put Falcons to the sword.

TheMongolZ were certainly carried by the brilliant Techno, 910, and Senzu, but you can’t say Falcons helped themselves, either. SunPayus put a strong performance in, as did dupreeh. As the veteran of the team, he shouldn’t need to be top-fragging to give his team a chance, but it was all around, simply not pretty.

With TYLOO up next for Falcons, the alarm bells will definitely start ringing if that’s anything but a dominant win.

G2 and Vitality come through opener unscathed

G2 and Vitality, two of the stronger teams at ESL Pro League Season 19, both managed to come through their opening matches unscathed. For Vitality, there was a small scare as Sharks threatened to take a map, although the individual quality eventually proved too much as they set up an interesting clash against BetBoom Team for a Playoffs spot.

It was business as usual for G2 against TYLOO, with m0NESY topping the scoreboard once again. However, it was refreshing to see a return to form for huNter- after his recent struggles, and hopefully this is something he can keep up throughout ESL Pro League. Now, a tough clash against TheMongolZ awaits for G2 in Group B.

The full results for the first two days of ESL Pro League Season 19 are as follows:

Day 1: