Cloud9 ready to defend their IEM Dallas title
Despite losing to Astralis in the upper final, Cloud9 had no problems winning the Consolidation final against OG.
The winners of last year's IEM Dallas will be able to defend their title when the 2023 edition of the tournament is played in late May.
Cloud9 had to take the long way through the Consolidation final against OG to qualify. Earlier they took a surprising loss against Astralis in the upper final.
Against OG it was once again Dmitriy "sh1ro" Sokolov, who drove the team to win OG's map pick of Mirage. The Russian AWP'er smashed OG with an insane K-D of 29-8 during the 30 rounds it took Cloud9 to win 16-14. On Overpass it was more of a team effort from the CIS team. A very solid CT side saw Cloud9 win comfortably 16-7.
14 out of 16 teams have now been found for the event. 00NATION, Fluxo, 9z, or INTZ will fight for one spot from the South American closed qualifier on the 12th and 13th of April, while the last spot at IEM Dallas will be handed out to the highest-ranked team on ESL's own ranking system. At the moment NAVI is the highest-ranked team that is not already invited or qualified for the event.
These teams are ready for IEM Dallas, which will be played from May 29th - June 4th:
G2
FaZe
Heroic
Cloud9
Team Liquid
Virtus.pro
ENCE
MOUZ
FURIA
Complexity
Astralis
Grayhound
Evil Geniuses
Nouns
TBD
TBD
