Astralis fall further: ESL Pro League Season 17 Group D recap

20 Feb

Kaustavmani Choudhury

ESL Pro League Season 17, the bi-annual month-long CSGO event organized by ESL, kicked off on March 15th with Group D matches. The group featured eight teams: Team Liquid, Rare Atom, ATK, ENCE, Team Spirit, Astralis, Forze and Natus Vincere.

ESL Pro League Season 17 features a new format with 32 teams instead of 24. The teams are divided into four groups of eight each. Each group plays a round-robin format with best-of-three matches. The playoffs will be played in a double-elimination bracket with best-of-three matches until the grand final which will be best-of-five.

Top Teams:

Forze qualified straight to the quarterfinals after winning an impressive 2-1 against Natus Vincere in their opening match. After that it was easy sailing for them as they breezed past Team Spirit and ENCE to clinch the top spot in the group.

ENCE had what most would call fairly easy matchups in the first two rounds of the upper bracket against Rare Atom and ATK. They dominated their way through these teams. But they could not procure the same level against Forze. They were beaten 2-0 by the Russians and had to settle for the second spot.

NaVi had a rough start in their opening match against Forze. But once in the middle bracket, they showed why they were a cut above the rest. Sending down Astralis and Rare Atom down to the lower bracket at 2-1 each. The final match was against Team Spirit, which ended in a commanding 2-0 win for NaVi to take the third spot for the playoffs.

In the lower bracket, Team Liquid were the most dominant side. Demolishing Rare Atom at 2-0, they made it to the Lower Bracket Finals against Astralis. Astralis themselves had to fight some grueling matches against ATK and Team Spirit. But the Danes fell short as the American Onslaught led by nitro was too much for them to handle. Liquid beat Astralis 2-0 to claim the final spot in the playoffs.

The teams which qualified to the playoffs are: