M80's EPL playoff qualification breaks NA dry spell

Earlier this day, M80 defeated FNATIC in a thrilling best-of-three, including the longest professional CS2 map by rounds, to qualify for playoffs. As pointed out by HLTV's Milan "Striker" Švejda, M80's qualification has broken a dry spell for NA teams not named Liquid or Complexity as the first Big Event playoff appearance in nearly half a decade. The last time it happened as noted by Striker was at EPICENTER 2019 where Evil Geniuses made playoffs before falling in the semifinals to mousesports.

Soon after that EPICENTER 2019 event, the world was throw into online disarray due to the pandemic, rendering Big Events impossible to hold as the Counter-Strike world fractured into regional competition. It was during this time that Evil Geniuses rose to be the number one team in the world, but held zero Big Event playoffs due to their reign taking place entirely online.

Since the return of offline play, North American Counter-Strike was upheld by two names only, Liquid, and more recently, Complexity. In the two plus years since returning to large LANs, the CS world has not seen another name from our continent in playoffs until now.

With Complexity still alive in the lower-but-not-lowest bracket and Liquid up 1-0 in their group, there is a very real possibility that we will see three North American teams in EPL playoffs, a fact that should uplift many broken-hearted NA fans.