ESL Impact Katowice ready for lift-off

The first ESL Impact standalone tournament of 2023 is set to start on Friday with ESL Impact Katowice. The tournament comes off the back of the first standalone Impact tournament last year at Valencia, which was dominated by Russian squad Nigma Galaxy, who have established themselves as the best team in the women's scene with additional wins at the first two seasons of the ESL Impact league.

Despite dominating the domestic scene, CLG Red's results internationally have left a lot to be desired as they failed to make the top four at ESL Impact Valencia 2022, with their only win coming against GODSENT fe, and once again falling short of a playoff berth at ESL Impact Season 2 Finals.

For CLG Red, Impact Katowice will be a chance to prove that they can turn their domestic success into International success. After winning everything that can be won on NA soil, they will want to prove that they can return to the top of the women's scene they dominated pre-COVID. CLG Red have been placed in a group with FURIA fe, 9 Pandas Fearless, and NAVI Javelins with the top two from each group making the playoffs.

Saints, on the other hand, are the complete opposite of CLG Red. On one hand, you have a storied organization with a rich history, and on the other you have a team that pulled a shock win over EG Gold in the closed qualifier. Saints turned heads with their 2-1 win over the Evil Geniuses team who had been favorites to join CLG Red in Katowice.

Saints have the unenviable task of facing Nigma Galaxy in their first match of Impact Katowice, with the other teams in their group being B4 fe and HSG fe. To compound their issues, Saints are being forced to play with stand-in Kaia "KiKi" Holmen in place of Iuliia "sckrafft" Gerasimova due to visa issues. After a shock run to get to the main event, Saints will be hoping they can pull a rabbit out of the hat again to make a run in Poland.

The groups for ESL Impact Katowice are as follows:

ESL Impact Katowice is set to kick off tomorrow with the first match at 04:00AM.