pretty sure the teams from upper swiss play teams from lower swiss

caps

still gonna stand with my predictions from before the season started
apac: hyounmin
emea: xeus
amer: mada
china: rarga/juicy (although happywei is looking to be real deal as well)

redgar

wait are they? i dont wanna be the saurce guy but im honestly curious

i was surprised too, he is 17

really its just canezerra doing absolute unholy things on his own, its more that every vct org is fumbling not signing him into academy team (or perheps not making academy team at all)

he turns 18 in like summer of 2026

tbh he never wanted to be smokes player, him playing clove was sort of a compromise

they are both 16 so unfortunetly, they are not much worth signing for any team that is trying to ascend and i don't see any org starting academy team mid year

im really not sure they can do it, once the team is labeled as academy, thinks can not just change mid turney, also from what i heard, sen genuinely lacks understanding of what academy teams are and how they work

i honestly asked myself the same question a while ago and yeah gotta say its the fan base, the fan basesmatter quite a lot in lol i was quite a t1 hater for long while but the fan base converted me to even like them a bit (a bit)

ascendant 3?

derke isnt fragging high...
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/2276/champions-tour-2025-emea-kickoff first in acs and kpr
https://www.vlr.gg/429387/fut-esports-vs-team-vitality-champions-tour-2025-emea-kickoff-ubsf/?game=196092&tab=overview

not feeling well supposedly

tbh with how jamppis IGLing is turning out, his pick up might have been also quite good since sayf could stay fraging flex but im glad vitality sticked with atleast one of the rookies they pick up last year

any clue who is IGling for dfm academy?

there wasn't even split 1 yet man...

yep just confirmed on his twitch

isn't hatto too young to play?

i mean... he sure wasn't the most desired duelist coming into franchising since he was mainly spaced taker and with the 2022 mate being what it was (cough cough.. chamber) he struggled heavily for the playstyle that took him to success before, however i don't think he has that low of a chances of making vct either through ascencion or being pick up, he did pretty decent with valiant last year and how with sns, they are the first seed coming into playoffs, he is also actively expanding his pool even giving chamber a try and looking good on fim for the first time

the last player people called "PR pick" made 2 international grandfinals last year

ok i just noticed abyss isn't their map pick, surely they will not have predictable comp on the 2 maps that were bot even in the map pool last year

idk about that, yes woot is on smokes and boo on flashes (for some reason they both looked fantastic on the other role last year) but they run the same comp they ran all of last year even though the abbys meta changed a lot, half the strats are also the same and you can see that great amout of strat book M8 have counted on that, it is just how fnc failed to go madrid where they didn't reinvent themselfs a bit in the offseason and just played how they ended in champs, i was hoping TH would not fall for this since they were on the oposite side of the upset run last year but oh well

fnc also have reported financial issues for the past year, the big mighty fnatic is budget org now (but really the decision to pick kaajak over xeus could have been anything, im just glad he made it to vct since that was a big question for a while as well)

was it? the speculated xeus buyout was over 800k, for kaajak im not sure if his contract wasn't ending last year so they might have gotten him for free

all NA superteams are gonna lose to c9 idk who wrote that script

are we talking about cs or lol, g2 genuinely shitting the bed in both, i am getting little worried for the g2 c9 match today

i was hoping chiwa would get his visa by now in which case yes, this way... it is gonna be tough for them and it would take lot of fnc choking

i feel like rossy is pretty obvious pick up, hardly gonna find better igl not already taken

go find god, i don't think anything else will save you

https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/69075912 i really should stop putting faith in jdg maan (somebody save stew and jkuro)

there is 119

i think there were rummors he was trailing this year as moose replacement

pretty sure it's planed for valorant to join in for next year

to me it really feels like they are banging on making alfajer the second coming of prime yay by replicating the system optic had as closely as possible

I'm glad you braught up the salaries cause if im correct, only had buyout on her, rest were either dropped or with contract till this year and as #5 mentioned, the buyouts on t2 talent in emea might atually be crazier then importing unrestricted FA from other side of the world.

the game is changing so fast that if you just stop for a minute, you're behind, kind of the same reason why 3/5 optic players are not in T1 for next year even though they were the best just 2 years ago

tbh i think havng prx as their scrim partner helped them more then people give them credit for

well... there goes an attempt to have an actuall coversation

sub gugli for oxy then we can see

honestly there are no good turkish teams left, PCF has comeback, EF signed qutioner like month ago, SUP have loversrock and galakticos signed qw1 2 weeks back
he might need to look into other regions

apparently icy is the priority on tryouts rn but if he fumbles okeanos is hopefully the next up

it's gonna be pretty common for academy teams, unless you're T1, org are gonna be picking up promissing names from ranked leaderboards who are gonna be duelist players 95% of the times who afterwards get to learn a new role

he actually did have this reputation, unfortunetly officials are different kind of nerves which makes some people bit of a scrim deamons but that was also what demon1 was known as before EG

as long as he is putting up the best numbers of the whole EG team (and EG doesn't leave or get booted out of vct) he should be fine

she was called there last minute

from the start it has beem between SR, G2 and mibr, SR look the best right now, G2 have arguably the best roster ever but rezq seems pretty nervous playing on stage, if she shakes it off in time... gob bless the other teams, mibr really depend on if the whole team frangs or just senera and jelly but they seem heavily inconsistent

g2 vs mibr is lowkey early grands, whoever loses goes lower bracket run

not that i would complain, however script is the script