While most opening matches at ESL One Cologne have proceeded as expected, one North American team found themselves on the wrong end of an upset.
The major upset of Group B featured NA favorites Team Liquid. Regarded as one of the strongest teams in their region, Team Liquid have enjoyed a successful year with multiple top four tournament placements. But during their opening match of ESL One Cologne against hometown favorites BiG, Liquid were completely dismantled.
Team Liquid had endured a rather blunt critique from newly signed BiG rifler Owen “smooya” Butterfield before the event, and smooya backed up his words on Dust2. Although they got off to a slow start on the first half, BiG were able to put on a dominant second half with eight straight round victories in a row.
For Liquid, the only shining light was Jonathan “ELiGE” Jablonowski. The 20-year-old rifler has always been recognized as one of North America’s single-strongest players, but even so his performance against BiG initially looked to be a career-level high. None of his teammates were ever able to come close to the numbers he put up on the scoreboard.
Over on the BiG side, meanwhile, the kills were distributed very evenly. Top performer Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz only had three more kills than the player at the bottom of the scoreboard.
Team Liquid will now be forced to play North for their tournament life in group B’s lower bracket tomorrow.
Renegades, who were pitted against the former SK Gaming roster in their debut game as Made in Brazil (MIBR), got off to a flying start against the two-time Valve Major winning core. Despite the Australian team’s lead, however, MIBR recouped during the end of the first half, and came back to claim the series 16-13.
Fnatic and FaZe Clan also moved on in the winners bracket, with wins over North and B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape respectively.
