Very unfair on Boaster and Mini.
I don't see how you can watch how Navi and Fnatic play and come to the conclusion that Navi is substantially more strategically advanced.

I don't think you can call Acend's win or Optic's win a fluke.

Optic was a top team for the whole of 2022, multiple finals appearance.
You could argue that fpx could've beaten them but that is not a certainty.

Acend had decent results prior to Champions 2021, making grand finals at Redbull beating gambit in that event.
Also making quarters at Masters Berlin, before being stopped by a monstrous comeback from 100t.

I would rather put these wins in "debatable", calling it a "fluke" is a disservice to their achievements.

I just hope they commit to 1 lineup for the rest of the season.
Surely, all this chopping and changing isn't good for familiarity.

It's for the reserve roster.
Shouldn't affect what Potter is doing with the main VCT roster.

Why would the guy with the only rifle take first contact?

Mazino has the chance to be the only player to play at every VCT lan.

I wouldn't count Wolfen as a sentinel.
He's played more games on duelist than any other role this VCT season.

Something is definitely one to keep an eye on, a walking highlight real.
I'm still not sure if PRX's looseness is an advantage for duelist players or not.
He doesn't quite get the support that derke or aspas gets but he has more freedom.

Foxy9 is an interesting one, probably the most aggressive duelist in vct right now.
He has alot of potential especially playing for a team as strong as DRX.

Aspas is amazing, however the way Loud plays kinda sets him up for kills.
He doesn't need to take as many first duels as other duelist as the double controller comps they play create enough space for them.

Leaf and Sayf are both top players who also do alot of work outside of their roles.
Leaf does alot of demo reviewers and helps the coaching staff out.

"Leaf actually watches a lot of matches, weirdly enough, and understands these comps inside and out. When we first started playing this comp, it was leaf that was like 'Oh, when we do this, we need to do it this way. We need to do this, we need to do this.

-Mce said in an interview with esports.gg

Sayf is known to help with strat calling and ideas aswell. He could honestly be a pretty strong igl.
At liquid he's currently been trying to work in union with Redgar and emil to mesh the ideas of the 3 prior rosters together.

If I had to pick one right now, I'd probably go for Leaf.
Though come the end of the season I might say sayf, it's really close between them two.

Pretty sure they are song lyrics.

"Im in the desert sipping diesel I’m a desert eagle."
"I cut the snakes in the grass with my john deer"
Both of these tweets are in this song by Xavier Wulf.
https://genius.com/Xavier-wulf-silver-fang-wulf-lyrics

Doesn't seem like anything cryptic.

Of course ranked stats doesn't translate over to pro play, I'm not claiming that.
I'm just showing that Harmii isn't an immortal player.

https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/Liquid%20Harmii%231337/overview
He's not immortal. He's literally top 50 right now.

Liooon, in HearthStone. She won the 2019 global finals, which netted her $200,000.
Geguri, in overwatch. She was on the Shanghai Dragons in overwatch, though her career wasn't too successful.
Karma, in Rocket League. She competed in a couple na rlcs seasons, which was the highest domestic tier in north america.

This is just a few that I know of.

https://twitter.com/bzkagaming/status/1572046612826030081
https://twitter.com/loud_less/status/1572297141502066688?s=20&t=yvzPNGEbvFVE7X_aFQjliQ

Despite not being an official part of Loud's backroom staff, he was credited by the Loud players and staff for helping them with their pistol round strats.
This probably is one of the reasons why Frod is the head coach now.

Yeah Loud won champs with the help of Saadhak and frod.
European teams normally have a common language between the players, this is normally English.

I don't feel like Koi fans would get xenophobic over Koi not having a full Spanish roster?
Winning is most important to fans and organisations.
Whilst they do try to balance this why national pride, winning is still the priority.

I don't care really?
I mean Loud wouldn't have won anything without the help of "foreigners".

I mean of course it would be cool if your country produced a team that could a huge tournament by themselves, but it's unrealistic for some small and less esports driven countries.

EMEA has been so intertwined amongst each other that there isn't that many reasons to create solo-national teams anymore.
EMEA is more focused on creating the best roster possible to win internationally, hence why teams try select the best players across the whole of emea instead of focusing on a single country.

There's no such thing as a free game.

Honestly, I feel bad for Kru.
They've gotten so close so many times this split, yet they always fall at the last hurdle.
So many games where 1 round going differently could have completely changed their season, look at the mibr, 100t, EG or even this game.
Atom has clearly helped to improve the team.
Sadly, it seems like the split is now over for Kru.

For Loud, this game had little to no meaning. They've already solidified themselves as a playoffs team.
Aspas was electric as per usual.
However, I think saadhak had a rare off game. A few miscalls and setups which cost Loud a few rounds.
The positive side of this is that Loud still won despite all this, a win whilst also being able to learn from mistakes is a valuable win.

Ultimately, this was a "What if?" game. Loud still won as predicted by most, this game will be forgotten amongst all of Loud's other wins.

Deserved to win.
They've been improving week on week.
Compare this to their first game vs c9, it's night and day.

Now the question is, can they make playoffs?

That's all with hindsight.
Xset was the second best North American team in 2022.

All this proves is that team cohesion and familiarity is very important for teams to function well.

I think alot of the Potter hate stems from the fact EG has had this core of boostio, jawgemo ,com and potter for a long time.
Potter has been coaching eg since 2021-08-20, this is quite considerable especially in esports terms.
However, EG have yet to have any consistent success.

If roster construction was advised by potter then the blame of "bad players" should fall partly on her.
However with how EG has been ran recently she might've not been in control.

Is she a good anti-stratter? Well EG seem to be good at this, though we don't know if this was done by her or Zikz.

As a viewer is kinda hard to judge coaches, due to us not knowing how much they contribute.

They play in unison.
Fundamentally speaking they are almost perfect.
Flawless crossfires, contact pushes and trades.
I'm surprised they are already this polished.

Loud was having a banger series versus EG and you were looking at their nipples?

I don't think we can rule out Koi just yet.
They have some favourable match ups in the coming weeks.
The likes of kc, bbl and heretics they still are yet to play.

Therefore, koi vs liquid in week 8 could be important.

They wont remove KC or BBL because they have huge fanbases.
They amount of viewership they bring in for EMEA is incredible.

BBL should be good in the future, they can always look into the Turkish tier 2 scene which is way too strong right now.
Kc can get better if they find a concrete solution for their igling issues, though this can't happen until next year.

Honestly, you can't really compare EG and Sentinels.
Both teams have widely different targets for the season.

Was it harsh to fire syyko? Well from an outsiders perspective, yes.

EG have been improving week on week, still you could argue they aren't good enough to play in the top league.
However, there's no point firing Potter and co right now. You physically can't overhaul the coaching staff due to the roster locks.

Come the end of the inaugural VCT season, if EG are still not performing at a "good" enough level then they can decide to change the coaching staff.

Who is saying aspas is bad?

I'm really happy with the new format.
2 groups of 8 teams with a round robin, which then concludes with a 6 team playoff.
I believe there is multiple splits aswell.

I think giving these game changers teams a good amount of games versus good level opponents will help EMEA GC alot.
This should help eliminate some of those landslide games caused by the huge gap in quality between teams.
Also there are so many organisations involved covering a wide amount of different players and regions.

Exciting times, I can only really see positives from this new format.

Yes they have a good chance of being promoted.
I'd expect them to get the Polaris spot into the ascension tournament.
Their main opposition would obviously be the the big 3 Turkish teams: super massive, s2g and fireflux. However only 2 of these teams can make it to the ascension tournament.
Also Acend and Case esports, from the eastern league and spanish league respectively, are 2 to look out for.

Marved fits the team nicely.
Marved coming in allows Zekken to go back to entrying whilst having both Dephh and Sacy on their main roles.
Sacy looks rejuvenated back on initiator.

It's a tricky conundrum.

Optic was really a super strong team that lasted a long time, a rarity in valorant.
The only low point was really at Champions 2021.
People forget to mention that this Optic team also made top 2 at Berlin.

I love jakee but he's not a superstar yet.
This game versus nrg was his first time going positive for cloud9, it was a monstrous performance by him to be fair.
He has a bright future but he still has some ways to go.

He's a great coach in terms of creating a strong team and unearthing talented players.
However, he's yet to win anything substantial or even have a deep run at an international event.

Personally, I think most of eg business should be depend on who doesn't get promoted.
There's alot of good talent in the NA tier 2 scene right now.

I think syyko would be a good pickup, this could either be as a head coach or a general manager.
Even though he's been removed from sentinels he has created a strong base, they have a really good coaching and squad setup.

I'm not overly impressed by potter, she has some unique ideas but eg currently struggle with alot of basic fundamentals.
Boostio is a weird one, his igling isn't top tier. Maybe if someone else carried the igling burden this could help his fragging capabilities.

It all really comes down to who is available.

They've actually improved alot since lock//in.
Scrim results and lock//in showed the old squad was simply not good enough.
You can argue xand wasn't the issue but change was needed.

Atom has pretty clearly improved the team especially fundamentally.
Even though Kru may go winless, the team has pushed some teams to the wire.
A few different rounds and Kru would not be rock bottom right now.

You can't put all the blame on tenz.
So many positive changes have transpired in sentinels.
Sacy looks alot more comfortable back on his signature role.
Double controller on pearl looks better.

Personally, Zekken looks better as an entry player than tenz right now.
This may be due to Zekken being the entry player for xset during the chamber meta.

Oh yeah, Tenz also being injured and ill definitely weakened his performance last week.