its one game, individual performances vary, don't lose your mind yet. At least wait till the end of the series before you draw dramatic conclusions like this

So does Sen losing a map imply that they're even worse? I'm not here to do backflips on it, but NRG had an undeniably impressive performance map 1 at least in terms of individual skill. Saying otherwise is just denial at best and deliberate misinformation to rage bait at worst.

hell, if EG is willing, they could also take the gamble on florescent or penny, no reason not to trial them as well

Ange1 is 3 years older and won with NAVI at 32/33, FNS has consistently been a world class IGL with arguably the best attack side midrounding (in contention with valyn, boaster and munchkin) and the best defense protocols in contention with (k1ng, nobody and johnQT). We KNOW he's old, we KNOW he gonna go triple negative at least once next season, but he's still going to provide more value than picking up a new IGL from tier 2 .

Are we still on this? FNS has not fragged for 4 years of valorant. we can come to a consensus that his benefit as a player comes from his IGLing, there's a reason rosters are built around him. Not to say there aren't better value IGL's but to say he's cheeks is a little ridiculous when he consistently led NRG and Optic to internationals, and before someone comments about this season, he got thrown in with very little to no prep and a hard schedule on a losing record and still almost made it. (also the C9 choke was generational)

In short, if you value trophies and success at the highest level, chronicle is the goat, if you value individual performance and dominance over the competition, Aspas is the goat.

I'd say Aspas better than decent at every international, he's in the top 3 performing duelists in every metric in every international he's attended if you exclude shanghai where LEV flopped, even then he was still the 6th best player at the event because every player above him was a duelist and he was holding a staggering 0.21 fkpr which means he's not playing for stats or baiting his team either. He's made nearly every international event. When looking at great players, the most important factors are consistency. There's a reason why nobody is going to argue that a player like Cned or Nats is the goat, even yay to some extent because while they may have been the undoubtedly the best player for a significant period, they haven't held up over time. When you think of Goats, you need players who have consistently near the best, sometimes this is easy because you have a player who's been the best for a long time EX: Lip in overwatch. But most of the time we need players who have been near the top for the longest. At this point in valorant, there are only really two main players that you can argue. Chronicle and Aspas. Both of these players have storied careers, multiple high-level international performances and have shown that they are the best or one of the best in their role for their entire career. Chronicle is a weird case because while he's almost never been the best player on his team (Nats on GMB) (Leo/alfajer on FNC)(although recently he's been the best on FNC) he's been a top 20 player throughout the entirety of his career and has never really had a significant drop in individual impact. The biggest thing he has going for him is his FOUR international title wins (3 with FNC, 1 with GMB). Aspas is a more typical case, while he only has 1 international title and 3 grand finals appearances, He's always been near the top or at the top of his role, significantly more than any other player. During the reign of Yay and LOUD's arguably best year (2022) the only player that consistently could match him was aspas, during FNC's 2023 dominance, aspas was regularly outperforming Derke. In 2024, he's continued his form with LEV. Even when LEV missed masters madrid, aspas was top 2 in kickoff and number 1 in Americas. He kept his form at both internationals he attended this year. You can argue that he's not the best at any given moment in valorant history, (same for chronicle) but his consistency in always being near the peak of play hasn't been matched.

I think the core issue with furia is more so how the team functions, like its just gambling on mwzera, He's cracked out of his mind, but even with really high quality supportive players, with mwzera as duelist, the team has almost always been Mwzera is dropping 25 and the rest of his team is double negative, it might not be inherently mwzera's fault, but for the team to function, either the game plan or mwzera's playstyle has to change. Please LMK if I'm wrong, we obv didn't get a lot of new footage for furia as they went out pretty early in kickoff but pre-dgzin furia looked like this and I think its very easy to draw the comparison. The point I'm trying to make is Pancada, nzr and khalil might not fix the core issues even if they're an upgrade. I'd honestly rather see them in a tier 2 roster where they could possibly make it back in with ascension or on MIBR and maybe generate some upsets to make MIBR a possible mid-table team although nzr isn't Brazilian so might have to curb expectations there.