It’s all a matter of sports culture really, American sports have always been built around superstar players that have a team built around them with the sole purpose of putting the guy in a position to carry whereas in European competition the team’s overall output is prioritised a lot more than individual input
You can attribute NA’s successes in valorant when compared to their failures in CS to this, CS has very little role differentiation, making an overall good group performance much more effective than that of a single individual. Meanwhile in Val you have roles literally made to frag while others support, you can see that both extremely successful NA teams in Sentinels and Optic had an inhumanly skilled carry on their team playing chamber or Jett.
The issue now is that you don’t have a broken character capable of enabling individual carrying at such level anymore
As a quick note, brazilians are also very individualistic just like their northern counterparts, but unlike them there’s little to no pecking order here so every players wants to be the superstar, this ends up creating teams with a lot of overall skill but absolutely no cohesiveness in them, hence why the overall level of Br teams is very low. It does happen at times, like in SK/LG and Loud that a team just fits in perfectly and becomes really dominant, with every player being able to play and shine in their preferred style in a way that plays off perfectly with each other
Now to my predictions to this year’s NA franchised teams
NRG- has that really good supporting core of Optic, and while I do think Som is capable of playing really well as a support player I doubt ardiis will perform well in that superstar role that yay did. It isn’t even a matter of individual skill, it’s just that the style of play that is engrained into his game is European, hence prioritising the group performance instead of playing in a way that he’s the superstar. Will still be a good team but it’s cultural differences will prevent it from establishing itself as a top of the pack team
C9- will just be shit, getting yay was definitely NOT the right decision, while he does fit the superstar criteria perfectly and vanity/xepppa have supportive playstyles, C9 already had their carry player in leaf, who is now being put in a conflicting spot, being unable to carry as well as provide good support, I also don’t like the zellsis pickup, a good player but that doesn’t really fit into the superstar nor the supporting role. Pair all that with the death of chamber and this team is doomed to fail
EG- the biggest unknown, it remains to be seen how this team will work but if they can find the right stride they can be really good, there are some really good supporting players in there and I believe in jaw’s superstar potential, all in all, they’ll still have to really click together (hard thing to do in a 10 man roster) and will all have to improve 10 fold individually to be able to vie for something, have potential, but their clear lack of a structured plan and vision makes it so that I wouldn’t bet on it
Sentinels- dephh is British, which is a bad thing, but he has enough experience playing in NA to be a good supporter, not perfect, but sufficient, zekken and tenz suffer with being a duo of superstar but history has shown that it is possible to conciliate them, as in shaq/kobe or even zekken/cryo, they’d need the perfect environment and role definition to work as a monster duo but it isn’t unheard of. The main issue will be the Brazilians, as I said before their culture is to also be superstars and not just supporting players, this cultural shock won’t mean they’ll suck, just won’t be as good as they should on paper
100T- in theory the best team of the region, last year’s continuous failures made the org’s management put down their feet and change shit up, having to achieve success in little time they went the most certain route with an European style, prioritising group performance, it worked as they won LCQ but since that style went against their way of play they didn’t get far at champs. The org seems to have recognised that and brought in an actual superstar in cryo, now all that remains is to see if he’s up to the task and if his teammates will be able to play well around him, I still feel like cryo just hasn’t what it takes to carry the team to an international win but if you have to bet, I’d advise going all in on this hoodie org
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