NA CS at the Majors: ESL One Cologne 2016

With the BLAST.tv Paris Major just under two weeks away, Dust2.us is building up to the last ever CS:GO Major Championship by taking a trip down memory lane at all the history of North American Counter-Strike in the top-tier competition. Yesterday we covered MLG Columbus 2016, but today we will be looking at the second Major of the same year, ESL One Cologne 2016.

ESL One Cologne 2016 was the Major follow-up to the historic MLG Colombus event that championed the LG squad, highlighted by a historic comeback against Liquid. The two teams would meet once more under the bright lights of Cologne, this time with LG under the SK moniker, and in the Grand Finals.

Joining Liquid by way of the previous Major standings and qualifiers were CLG and OpTic. The famed OpTic brand sported many familiar faces of NA CS' past and present, including a pair of current Liquid members in Keith "NAF" Markovic and Damien "daps" Steele. Headlined by Tarik "tarik" Celik, the rest of the names on the CLG list are quite the blast from the past.

The three different lineups from the North American region touched down in Cologne for the Major, but only one of them would make it out of group play. Liquid marched through with a BO1 win over the Frenchmen at Envy and a BO3 victory over a Nikola "NiKo" Kovac-led Mousesports. CLG in Group A and OpTic in Group B both failed to mount a win before exiting 0-2 in their respective groups. With two teams out with a 13th-16th placing, Liquid was the sole survivor early in the event.

ESL One Cologne 2016 stands out as being the first Major to feature a North American squad in the Grand Final, while also being a revenge game against a Brazilian lineup looking to reach legendary status. Despite the familiarity, Liquid would not put up a fight as they did in their Columbus matchup, losing in a rather quick 0-2 final.

CLG kicked off their event with a nail-biter loss to Gambit 13-16 on Dust2 despite the server-best showing by Hazed. Their second matchup against Dignitas was a swift beatdown of the Americans. 16-1 in favor of the Danes and CLG was out as quick as they entered.

OpTic's scorelines were similar to CLG's just flipped in pace. They started group play against NIP, where they were taken out on D2 with ease 4-16. It was in the elimination match where it got dramatic against Flipsid3 Tactics. Despite their best efforts, Flipsid3's T-side Train was far too much for OpTic to handle. They would lose 13-16 and bow out alongside CLG.

After the successful group play from Liquid, their sights were set on the quarterfinals series against NAVI. Liquid was able to show resilience in this series following a reverse sweep to take out their Ukrainian foes with wins on Nuke and Cobblestone. Onto the semis, dual 16-13 wins on Cobblestone and Cache over fnatic was the recipe for the Liquid 2-0, cementing their first-ever Major Finals berth. The match meant more, as it was a rematch of the MLG Columbus meltdown just months prior. Liquid was overwhelmed by SK, failing to mount ten rounds in either of the two maps to go out in the finals 0-2.

Despite the disappointing finals performance, Liquid showed incredible form in this Major with wins over two top-five teams in the playoffs. Individually, the familiar pairing of EliGE and nitr0 played well, something that would become a standard for Liquid for many years. Although they fell short, this event was important for the growth of the young talent that would eventually become famed veterans in our scene.

Tomorrow our series will continue with ELEAGUE Atlanta 2017.