NRG vs Ghost Gaming

ESL Pro League Season 8 Finals: Day 3 ,

The ESL Pro League Finals have been off to a great start. So many upsets and a variety of unique teams are making it into the upper brackets of the events. Event the North and South American teams are holding their own against the likes of bigger European names such as Navi and G2. However, in this matchup, we will be taking a look at two North American teams that got pitted against each other in the 1-1 bracket where the winner will move on to the playoffs and the loser will be eliminated. This will be a best of three events and I predict right off the bat that this will go int three maps. Let's get started.

NRG :

A strong showing yesterday against MIBR almost put them straight into the semi-finals, but Coldzera and company had other plans, making a comeback to force overtime on Inferno to then take it in swift fashion. No crazy double or even triple overtimes this time. NRG looked good though they did have some mistakes, with players like Stewie2k and Fer on the opposition is can make movement and predicting aggression rather difficult. Though now that NRG is against the likes of Ghost Gaming, I feel that the globally ranked #6 squad can fully work to their advantage and have a strong showing against them.

The Map pool for NRG is: Inferno at 18-7, Mirage at 10-8, Overpass at 13-5, Nuke at 8-6, Train at 9-5, Cache at 4-5, and Dust 2 at 1-2

Ghost Gaming :

Ghost Gaming lost their opening best of one against Mousesports, who by the way look surprisingly strong this event despite weaker performances by top team member these last few events, be on the lookout for them. Back to Ghost, losing to Mouse dropped them into the elimination bracket where they took a convincing 2-0 victory against Australia's own ORDER. Though ORDER has some hype built around them with new coach "ElmaPuddy", the team still did not rise to the occasion and will likely stay where they are at on the global scale where they are currently ranked 68th. This game against NRG will be the first real challenge for the young squad and though they have had some success against NRG in the past, beating them at CS Summit 3, this event has much higher steaks and is not as relaxing of an atmosphere as CS Summit is.

Maps for Ghost Gaming is: Inferno is 8-7, Train is 8-3, Cache is 5-0, Dust 2 is 3-1, Mirage is 3-1, Nuke is 1-3, and Overpass is the permaban,

Map Pick/Ban:

This is a best of three series where each team will ban two maps, pick one map and the final untouched map will be chosen as the decider. NRG will ban out Cache and dust 2, taking away two keymaps from Ghost and two inconsistent maps fro NRG. Ghost will ban out Overpass as their permaban and Nuke as they do not play it well. Leaving Inferno, Train, and Mirage.

Final Thoughts:

Ghost has the potential to win this game as they have had positive results on these maps in the past. However, I cannot get over the fact that NRG has come alive this even after playing lesser for some time now and even though they are playing lesser than they can play, they are still being competitive with top teams and making finals of top-tier events. NRG should take this in two maps if played right, but three if need be. Medium bet on NRG.