EG crushed by Vitality, what went wrong?

A lightning rod for criticism in the first half of the year, a run of poor results led to Evil Geniuses having a complete revamp in the off-season. After missing out on their initial targets the historic organization decided to put their faith in their EG Black squad who had been showing some impressive form in domestic competition. The only change made was the swapping out of William "RUSH" Wierzba for Timothy "autimatic" Ta, and the team's debut couldn't be against more difficult opposition as they faced BLAST Paris Major winners Vitality.

The result was about what you would expect from a team with extremely limited tier-one experience, apart from autimatic and junior, playing against one of the best teams in the world. Vitality swept the inexperienced EG team aside with a comfortable 2-0 victory leaving EG facing off against NIP in their next match. EG were clearly not ready to be competitive against such an elite opposition but what specific takeaways were there from the series?

flameZ comes out swinging

The announcement that the reigning Major Champions had decided to replace one of their core players was met with extremely mixed reactions, Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen had become the player with the most Major titles after Vitality's win in Paris and he was no slouch either, posting a 1.11 rating at the Major. However, the 30-year-old won't be able to sustain that level forever and with the sudden availability of Israeli star Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan on free agency, Vitality decided to make the switch as they look to the future.

Whilst many in the community felt the switch was harsh on the Danish legend, flameZ's performance on his debut proved that whilst the move was one for the future it certainly isn't going to hurt them in the present as the young rifler dropped a 1.52 rating to propel Vitality to victory. With Emil "Magisk" Reif also dropping a 1.52 rating it shows the domination the European side had over the NA team.

Inexperience shows

For Colby "Walco" Walsh it was a baptism of fire at the tier-one level for his team, with the young IGL having only previously played against domestic and lower-tier European opposition. Walco will need to learn quickly to help his EG team reach a competitive level at the top of the season.

One of the big problems EG faced was struggling to convert man-advantage situations, for example, on Overpass EG managed to find the first kill ten times but only came away from the map with six rounds. This is not an issue unique to EG; if we recall all the way back to last year when Complexity were a rookie team at the tier-one level, one of their biggest issues was converting favorable advantages. Complexity have just put together an impressive win over NIP and at the start of the year had a great run at IEM Katowice, which shows that not only is it a common problem for inexperienced teams but also one that can be fixed over time.

Early signs of an AWPer upgrade

Despite the crushing loss the team received, Paytyn "junior" Johnson had been killing it in the domestic scene since his benching by Complexity last year, and with Jerric "wiz" Jiang being one of the most heavily criticized parts of the previous EG lineup the former FURIA AWPer would have to show a better level than his previous tier one displays in order to avoid the same criticism.

In one of the few positive takeaways from the game, junior showed signs of the potential that saw him called up to FURIA and Complexity in previous years as he was the only player to go positive from the EG team with a 1.07 rating. Compare this to wiz's 0.74 rating against Vitality in their last meeting, with EG winning twelve rounds compared to the nine EG managed against Vitality this time around it already hints that the team have an upgrade in the AWPer position.

Whats next for EG?

Next up EG will be playing off against NIP, who got off to a shaky start with a close loss to EG's fellow NA side Complexity. EG will no doubt see the Swedish team as a much more beatable team than their previous opponents with the match scheduled for tommorow at 12:30PM.