AGO Gaming vs Team Spirit

Farmskins Championship #2 - IEM Katowice 2018 Qualifier,

After an exciting and jammed packed weekend in Atalanta with the ELEAGUE Major Qualifier, we now relax and wait for the real show to begin next weekend when the group stages begin taking place. For now we will look elsewhere for our Counter Strike fix, and we will be divulging into the lower tier European circuit where academy teams are developing and some teams are stuck in elo hell. In today's match up we have one of those very teams that are stuck on a rise to the top; AGO Gaming. Playing against AGO is Team Spirit.

AGO:

AGO Gaming has built quite a name for themselves over the last few months winning several events and LANs. Their latest two victories come in the form of the ESEA MDL Season 26 European Finals and the ESEA Season 25 Global Challenge. AGO have been closing the gap on their tier 2 status with victories over teams like Space Solders and GODSENT.

The map pool for AGO is a rather large one, starting from the top we have an astronomical record on Train, with a record of 28-7, Mirage follows with a record of 17-8, then Inferno at 10-11, Cobblestone at 16-4, Overpass at 14-3, Cache at 6-4 and Nuke is AGO's perma ban.

Team Spirit:

Team Spirit is a team that I honestly do not know much about, I've seen their name in the lower tier European tournaments over the years and they're slowly starting to pop up more and more. In a recent event they actually beat AVANGAR, a team that almost took out Team Liquid for the last qualifier spot in the ELEAGUE Major. Spirit won the Pre-qualifier to get to this qualifier. Counter strike has so many qualifiers.

Maps for Team Spirit are as following; Mirage is at 10-14, Inferno at 12-5, Overpass at 11-6, Nuke at 5-8, Cache at 7-4, Cobblestone at 2-7, and Train at 0-2.

Map Pick/Ban:

Unfortunately for AGO, it is likely that in this best of three Train will be the first map to be banned on the side of Spirit. AGO will likely return the ban with a swift boot of the map Nuke, as it is their perma banned map. The first pick for Spirit will be Inferno, and AGO will go for Mirage, continuing the bans with Cobblestone and Cache the decider will fall to Overpass.

Final Thoughts:

My final thoughts with this match up is that AGO is becoming the best polish team in the world, even greater and in better form than Virtus.Pro. These guys are no joke and they are here to reach the next level and take that polish top spot from VP, this is a best of three so their is no fluke of just winning an off round and resetting the economy, this will be a series where the best team will come out on top. And to me and the level of performance that I am seeing out of AGO, they should win this match up no doubt and I would argue and early prediction or them to win this qualifier and get to IEM Katowice.