ELEAGUE Major Boston concludes this weekend with The New Champions, and ELEAGUE analyst Sean Gares spoke to FanSided about the Major’s final rounds.
It all comes down to this weekend. Turner and IMG’s ELEAGUE Major Boston enters its The New Champions phase Friday, the last step in crowning a new ELEAGUE Major Champion.
Misfits in-game leader Sean “seangares” Gares will be joining the ELEAGUE analyst desk for the final rounds, but first he joined FanSided to give us his thoughts about the final eight teams.
Check out Sean Gares’ thoughts on The New Champions below, then stream all the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competition this weekend on Twitch.
FanSided: Your former team Cloud9 drew G2 Esports in The New Champions quarterfinals. Which Cloud9 do you think we’ll see this weekend? Could they beat the so far undefeated G2?
Sean “seangares” Gares (SG): I look for them to actually have a pretty good match against G2. It’s a great matchup for them as far as the map pool goes. They play maps that G2 doesn’t like playing and they don’t play maps that G2 likes playing.
So they’ll get good bans in, like they’ll ban Nuke against G2, which is probably one of their best maps. And they’ll likely pick Train or Mirage, which are both maps that G2 doesn’t like playing. They’re a great quarterfinal matchup against G2. I think they could pull off the upset.
FanSided: The team everyone is looking at is Quantum Bellator Fire, whom we’ve never seen in an ELEAGUE playoff before. What do you think got QB Fire to The New Champions?
SG: I think they definitely got underestimated by a couple of teams. That comeback [against] Mousesports in particular was phenomenal. They’re down 13-2 at half, so for them to come back against arguably a Top 8 or 10 team in the world, that shows a lot of resilience on their part. I think in particular their Counter-Terrorist side has been really, really strong.
FanSided: We saw a lot of lesser-known and struggling teams find success at ELEAGUE Major Boston. Is there a team, playoff or not, that you think has turned the corner based on these last few weeks?
SG: The entire CIS region. From Vega Squadron to QB Fire to AVANGAR, all those teams have showed me that they’re definitely pushing into that upper echelon of CS:GO. I can see the strategy behind their gameplay, and once they develop their Terrorist sides a little bit better, and have more sets, tactics and executes, they could really turn the corner in 2018 and really be strong forces throughout the entire year instead of just these couple upsets that they’ve had. I think they could take it further.
FanSided: Conversely, some big names did not reach The New Champions, including previous ELEAGUE Major winners Astralis and runners-up Virtus.pro. What advice would you give to those teams moving forward?
SG: I think they’re very different. VP, I think they have the longest-standing roster in CS:GO right now. They might have announced today they’re making a roster change, which I can’t argue against at this point. They’ve proved in the past that the five players on the team are capable of winning championships; they were the best team in the world, arguably, at the start of 2017. So to see where they’re at now, they might need a new player to revitalize themselves.
Astralis, on the other hand, I think their struggles are the fact dev1ce wasn’t really practicing with them. He had his injury, he literally just announced he was going to play the Major a couple weeks ago, and he’s playing a role he doesn’t typically play. It’s a very weird scenario for Astralis, and I think given more time they wouldn’t have done it the way they did. I don’t think they’re hanging their heads, because they know they weren’t prepared for this event.
FanSided: We could see you playing at the ELEAGUE Major in Sunday’s showmatch. Who would Sean Gares want on his showmatch team?
SG: Janko [Paunovic] and Moses [Jason O’Toole]. They’ve played professionally before, so I’d definitely pick them ahead of the rest of the pack. Other than that, Anders [Blume], DDK [Daniel Kapadia] — they all have really good theory on the game.
Next: ELEAGUE Major Boston playoff details and schedule
ELEAGUE Major Boston: The New Champions begins today at 10 a.m. ET exclusively on Twitch. For full coverage of the ELEAGUE Major, follow the Gaming category at FanSided.