Sentinels and NRG will go to the quarterfinals.
MIBR and T1 will make surprising runs.
The Final will be Loud against NaVI or Team Liquid.
C9 won't perform well.
DRX curse will come back.
Only championship contender team was LOUD and they lost their IGL and pancada who is one of the best smokes players in the world, would take a CRAZY pickup to replace them and stay as good as they were + aspas/less/saadhak are not a strong enough core to just be swapping out players keep their momentum
and LATAM better because LEV was solid and they just got the best player in South America
quick edit: Im fucking trolling I thought sacy was IGL but that might not be true, maybe LOUD can run it back. I still think LEV and KRU are going to be stronger though.
Yeah no Saadhack has always been the teams IGL. And actually the fact that the team played so well and you couldn’t even tell he was the IGL by his numbers is insane. Honestly he is the best on in the world rn imo, or at least the only top tier one that can consistently hit his shots
I don’t even know how big of a downgrade Cauanzin is over Sacy, I always thought Causnzin was the best player in Nip. Imo is not a downgrade at all but we would have to ask Brazilians. And then Tuyz is a promising young player, I think the entire teams success relies on him performing or not
Cauanzin just don't have the same xp that Sacy has, but their level are the same 100% (maybe Cauanzin's peak can be better, due to be younger than Sacy)
Tuyz and matheuzin carried TBK to be the 3rd best team in BR/LATAM in LCQ (Specially Tuyz, which has a great clutch ability, just like pANcada) but he never played Smokes in pro scene yet, but they improvement through this year-end is really remarkable (They're duoing a lot with saadhak to learn new things)
+
Both are U-20 (Tuyz, 19y and Cauanzin, 17y) and are really cracked, just needing to gain more xp to perform well like Sacy and pANcada
My hot takes-
C9 will be mid
Nrg will be the best na team
Lev will be the best in Americas along with nrg
Drx will make a deep run(upto semis atleast)
Zeta will prove their core chemistry and make it to top 8 atleast
The big 3 of emea,fnc,tl,Navi will all be in playoffs
Koi will be the dark horse of the tournament and will also make top 8
Top 4 will be fnc/tl/Navi(either of those 2),drx,nrg/lev