Vitality and Natus Vincere made it through the group stage with three straight wins to put them directly into the Semi-Finals on Saturday in the Lanxess Arena in Cologne. However, when looking at the top performers of the tournament so far, G2 sticks out despite their opening loss against SAW. In the lower bracket, G2 completely annihilated their opponents to secure a Quarter-Final spot in Cologne. Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa is one of the two new members on the roster, and looking at the stats for the tournament so far, it looks like a very good move by the management of G2.

Here are the 10 best performers in the group stage of IEM Cologne 2024:

1. {cflag:BA} Nikola “NiKo” Kovač (G2) – 1.44 rating (9 maps)

2. {cflag:RO} Mihai "iM" Ivan (Natus Vincere) – 1.43 rating (7 maps)

3. {cflag:UA} Valerij "b1t" Vakhovsjkyj (Natus Vincere) – 1.42 rating (7 maps)

4. {cflag:RU} Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov (G2) – 1.39 rating (9 maps)

5. {cflag:GT} Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa (G2) – 1.38 rating (9 maps)

6. {cflag:LT} Justinas "jL" Lekavičius (Natus Vincere) – 1.35 rating (7 maps)

7. {cflag:BA} Nemanja "huNter-" Kovač (G2) – 1.33 rating (9 maps)

8. {cflag:PL} Roland "ultimate" Tomkowiak (Liquid) – 1.30 rating (9 maps)

9. {cflag:IL} Shahar "flameZ" Shushan (Vitality) – 1.29 rating (7 maps)

10. {cflag:FR} Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut (Vitality) – 1.28 rating (7 maps)

You can read more about the tournament, results and schedules on our [link:{"url":"https://pley.gg/news/everything-need-know-about-iem-cologne-2024","isNewTab":true,"text":"tournament page"}].

NiKo

B1tGOD

m0NESY

malbsMd

huNter

Ultimate

flameZ

ZywOo

G2 Esports

Facing a packed Royal Arena, NAVI continued their impressive campaign in Copenhagen, where they were initially considered outsiders. However, during the playoffs, NAVI demonstrated their ability to thrive under pressure, securing victories against Eternal Fire and G2. Against the seasoned FaZe roster, NAVI elevated their performance yet again.

FaZe opted for Ancient as the opening map, yet they never managed to gain a lead. Finn "karrigan" Andersen's squad consistently trailed NAVI, with NAVI's in-game leader Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen excelling in both shot-calling and fragging. Valeriy 'b1t' Vakhovskiy, the sole remaining member from NAVI's 2021 Major Champions team, and Justinas "jL" Lekavicius, the standout performer of the event, contributed significantly, culminating in NAVI securing the map.

Moving to Mirage, NAVI secured the pistol round, but FaZe struck back, seizing momentum and dominating NAVI's map pick with ten consecutive round wins. FaZe's 10-2 lead at halftime transitioned into a resounding 13-2 victory, forcing the match onto Inferno as the final map.

Inferno, renowned as the ultimate decider map in Counter-Strike, set the stage for the historic conclusion of the first CS2 Major. NAVI swiftly amassed seven rounds, overturning the narrative once more. FaZe's dominance on Inferno waned, allowing NAVI to dictate the pace. A pivotal 1vs3 clutch by FaZe's newcomer, David "frozen" Čerňanský, momentarily halted NAVI's momentum. However, NAVI's proactive approach, exemplified by Justinas "jL" Lekavicius, ensured they maintained control, thwarting FaZe's comeback attempts. The first half concluded 9-3 in favor of NAVI.

The pistol round in the second half proved decisive, as NAVI capitalized and won all rounds in the second half to emerge victorious in Copenhagen. A first Major win for Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen, Justinas "jL" Lekavicius, Ivan "iM" Mihai, and Ihor "w0nderful" Zhdanov, while Valeriy 'b1t' Vakhovskiy won his second Major with impressive win in the Royal Arena.

NAVI takes home the title alongside the first prize of $500,000 and the honour as the first Major winner in CS2.

NAVI - FaZe 2-1 | PGL Major Copenhagen Grand Final

13-9 (Ancient) | b1t - 1.55 Rating / 19-12 K-D / 98.1 ADR

2-13 (Mirage) | ropz - 1.91 Rating / 16-4 K-D / 109.1 ADR

13-3 (Inferno) | b1t - 2.16 Rating / 23-7 K-D / 131.6 ADR

Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy - 1.52 Rating / 51-34 K-D / 104.0 ADR

Aleksib

w0nderfu1

Natus Vincere

FaZe

Huge news broke today with Natus Vincere confirming the rumors about their move to an international roster.

Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen, Justinas "jL" Lekavicius, and Mihai "iM" Ivan are the new faces on the team joining Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and Valerii "b1t" Vakhovskyi on the team.

While Aleksib has been a household name during the last couple of years in CS:GO, it was at the BLAST.tv Paris Major, that Justinas "jL" Lekavicius (Apeks), and Mihai "iM" Ivan (GamerLegion) made quite an impression with several outstanding performances.

There is no news yet about the future of Denis "electroNic" Sharipov, Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy, and Andrij "npl" Kukharsjkyj. The two Russians have been connected with a move to Cloud9.

Natus Vincere will play with this lineup at BLAST Fall Groups from July 10th.

In August, a new Counter-Strike tournament will see the light of day in Saudi Arabia. The tournament will be held in conjunction with the Gamers8-festival, that according to itself is the "world's largest gaming and esports festival”.

On Monday two of the biggest positive surprises at the BLAST.tv Paris Major, Apeks, and GamerLegion were invited to the tournament, which then completed the whole current HLTV top 10 rankings.

There is still one EU slot open for the second open qualifier left.

16 teams will fight for a prize pool of $1.000.000. ESL has been selected as the production company for the event.

These teams are going to Riyadh to compete from August 14-20, 2023: (world ranking)

GamerLegion

Apeks

With a Major Grand Final coming up, the young players of GamerLegion have already reached a milestone that many others can just dream about. The fairytale run at the Major in Paris has undoubtedly made several teams interested in the service of the Grand Finalist of the last CS:GO Major in history.

One of them could be Frederik "acoR" Gyldstrand, who has played an excellent tournament so far. Speaking to Dust2.dk about the future of GamerLegion, the Dane hinted towards a time to come, when the likes of 23-year-old Ivan "iM" Mihai and 20-year-old Kamil "siuhy" Szkaradek could be hard to keep on the team.

- I would probably count on many of the players on the team getting offers from other teams. Of course, I can't speak for myself, I'm probably getting a little older compared to what many people think. It's hard to say, but I believe that there will be team offers left and right for the young guys on the team.

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One of the issues for GamerLegion, in order to be able to keep their new superstars on the roster, will undoubtedly be the salaries.

- You can't really do anything about it. If a tier-1 team comes knocking on a guy who gets 20.000 DKK ($2900) a month and he gets an offer of 150.000 DKK ($21.700). There is no one who can say no to that. You get to play all the high and good tournaments and be in the tier-1 tournaments all the time, Frederik "acoR" Gyldstrand says.

GamerLegion faces Team Vitality tomorrow in the Grand Final of the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

You can read the full interview (in Danish) with Frederik "acoR" Gyldstrand on Dust2.dk [link:{"url":"https://www.dust2.dk/nyheder/36599/acor-teaser-omkring-loenninger-paa-cs-scenen","isNewTab":true,"text":"here"}].

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acoR

siuhy

Keoz

isak

It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely candidate as a Major MVP, than a player from GamerLegion. An organization mostly known for grinding out the B-tier tournaments of CS:GO. But since September 2022, people has started to pay more attention to the German Organization.

With the signing of Belgian Nicolas "Keoz" Dgus, the young mastermind of MOUZ NXT Kamil "siuhy" Szkaradek, and the Danish AWP’er Frederik "acoR" Gyldstrand, results started to align. Even before they were announced as a team, the roster scraped their way through the open qualifiers for IEM Rio before doing the same at the European RMR. A 2-1 win against G2 was enough though to put the minnows on everybody’s radar before the Major. Here their journey was cut short after going 2-0 up in the Challengers Stage, but the newly formed roster could not perform in the bo3 format and lost their chance of qualifying for the Legends Stage.

In Paris, the outcome has been completely reversed. GamerLegion lost both their bo1 matches against Complexity and The MongolZ before winning all their bo3 matches in the Challengers Stage. In the Legends Stage, they took down 9INE, Fnatic, and Apeks to qualify with only a loss against NAVI on their record.

Then we saw a spectacular performance from the team against Monte in the Quarter-Finals. A 16-10, 16-3 victory underlined the impressive teamwork spearheaded by the aggressive entry-rifler Ivan "iM" Mihai. In the quarter-final against Monte, “iM” ended the match with an insane 1.78 rating elevating him to the top of the rankings of the whole event overtaking Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut.

[image:{"source":"cloudinary","publicId":"players/Copy_of_20230515_Stephanie_Lindgren_D2_BLAST_PARIS_MAJOR-11060_m9prfa","originalWidth":2048,"originalHeight":1365,"customWidth":"100%","customHeight":"100%","cloudinaryAssetData":true,"cloudName":"pley-gg","format":"jpg","caption":"Credit: Stephanie Lindgren, BLAST","alt":"iM, GamerLegion"}]

The emotions were high after GamerLegion qualified for the Champions Stage at the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

The 23-year-old Romanian is playing only his second Major in his career. He started playing professionally in 2018 with the all-Romanian team Nexus. Here he played until 2021 primarily against Tier-2 and Tier-3 opponents. He averaged a 1.10 HLTV rating throughout all his games, which put him on the radar at GamerLegion.

Ivan "iM" Mihai joined GamerLegion in April 2021. Isak "isak" Fahlén also made his debut on the team alongside iM. The two players have played 475 maps for GamerLegion since joining the roster.  Ivan "iM" Mihai is averaging a very impressive 1.14 rating on all his maps for the team.

The Romanian re-signed his contract with GamerLegion back in 2022. It is unknown for how long, “iM” is under contract, but he will most likely be on the radar for a lot of teams after his performance at BLAST.tv Paris Major.

Biggest tournament win: Thunderpick Bitcoin Series #2 - $32.000

Currently the highest rated player at BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023

Ivan "iM" Mihai and GamerLegion face Heroic in the Semi-Final of BLAST.tv Paris Major today at 15.00 (CET).

During GamerLegion’s elimination match against Cloud9 in the IEM Rio Major Challengers Stage’s 2-2 pool, the European team showed off a rather unusual boost in Connector on Overpass.

In the Connector on Overpass, Romanian rifler Ivan “iM” Mihai got boosted on a lamp just down the stairs, where he caught Cloud9’s Timofey “interz” Yakushin completely off guard. It was clear to see that the Russian wasn’t expecting iM to be there, and he even tried to clear the spot under the lamp with a Molotov, which didn’t burn the GamerLegion rifler.

[twitchClip:BlightedDiligentLarkPeteZarollTie-lhUb4Kc7VolYe3sQ]

Even the two commentators that were in charge of casting the match, Alex “MACHINE” Richardson and Chad “SPUNJ” Burchill both were completely surprised by the boost.

“I’m going to be completely honest, I didn’t know you could do that” - SPUNJ said after he saw iM getting boosted on the lamp.

Cloud9

GamerLegion has qualified for the prominent LAN tournament Elisa Masters Espoo 2022, where they will compete against profiled teams like Astralis, MOUZ and ENCE.

That became a reality this Wednesday when GamerLegion managed to defeat ex-Finest Elisa Invitational Fall, which works as a qualifier for the $200.000 main event. There was no doubt in today’s matchup that it was Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek and GamerLegion who were the better team on the day.

With two crushing victories on Vertigo (16-4) and Mirage (16-7), GamerLegion swiftly eased past ex-Finest to lock in a ticket to Finland in mid-November, after a staggering individual performance by Mihai “iM” Ivan who ended the series with a 1.75 Rating and a +26 K-D diff.

GamerLegion – ex-Finest 2-0 | Elisa Invitational 2022

16-4 (Vertigo) | {cflag:RO} iM – 1.66 Rating / 22-9 K-D / 113.9 ADR

16-7 (Mirage) | {cflag:RO} iM – 1.84 Rating / 26-13 K-D / 125.9 ADR

MVP: {cflag:RO} Mihai “iM” Ivan – 1.75 Rating

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Attending teams | Elisa Masters Espoo 2022

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With only one map to be played the choice fell upon Mirage, and had GamerLegion starting on the CT-side, while fnatic took on the role of the terrorists.

The match started out well for the now international lineup of fnatic, taking a solid early lead of 5-1. GamerLegion quickly answered back with a little run of their own to even out the score, primarily carried by an excellent fragging performance from "iM". It was the more experienced side of fnatic that came out of the first half with the best result though, being up 9-6.

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fnatic extended their lead by two rounds after switching to the CT-side, but were abruptly stopped in their track by a GamerLegion that seemed to have their number in the second half. The "ALEX"-led squad managed to once again equalize the score at 13-13 after a 1v3 clutch from stand-in "Peppzor". The rest of the rounds belonged to GamerLegion who managed to get over the finish line at 16-13.

fnatic – GamerLegion 0-1 | PGL Major Antwerp 2022 Europe RMR Open Qualifier 4 (Grand Final)

13-16 (Mirage) | {cflag:RO} Ivan "iM" Mihai – 1.86 Rating / 35-19 K-D / 122.8 ADR

Peppzor

Fnatic

The last ever DreamHack tournament in CS:GO's history is underway, with the opening round of DH Open November being played this Wednesday. The first matchup at the $100.000 event was between GamerLegion and the favorites from BIG, where the Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz-led side ended on top.

BIG began the series stealing GamerLegion’s map pick on Mirage by a wonderful performance by the powerful duo in tabseN and Florian “syrsoN” Rische, as they ended the first map with a 1.33 and 1.32 rating respectively. Especially BIG’s CT side was a troubling force for the underdogs from GamerLegion, which caused them a lot of problems.

Overpass was an all-even affair until 8-8. From here on the Swedish underdogs began to string multiple rounds together to take a 15-9 lead before BIG woke up. A superb ending to the map from Nicklas "gade" Gade saw BIG haul in the deficit and force the map to overtime. Here GamerLegion regained their composure and were able to win BIG's map pick.

The decider map was Vertigo. Normally a strong map for BIG, but against GamerLegion the Germans had to work hard. Again it was Florian “syrsoN” Rische and Nicklas "gade" Gade who was the key players for BIG. At the break, BIG was ahead 9-6, but on their CT-side, they once again let GamerLegion back in the match. At 13-13 the stakes were high, but here the experienced in-game leader Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz showed his worth with some important kills in the endgame to secure BIG a victory to avoid an elimination match against MOUZ. The Germans will be back in action tomorrow, where they will face MAD Lions for a spot in the playoffs.

BIG – GamerLegion 2-1 | DreamHack Open November

16-12 (Mirage) | {cflag:DE} syrsoN – 1.33 Rating / 25-15 K-D / 87.6 ADR

16-19 (Overpass) | {cflag:RO} iM - 1.52 Rating / 34-25 K-D / 103.5 ADR

16-14 (Vertigo) |  {cflag:DE} tabseN – 1.42 Rating / 26-19 K-D / 112.2 ADR

MVP: {cflag:DE} Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz – 1.22 Rating / 75-69 K-D / 99.7 ADR

tabseN

syrsoN

gade

The current CS:GO scene hold countless talents and promising players who are ready to take the next step into the very top. We’ve seen the rise of the French prodigy Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut. An individual which hold a completely outstanding arsenal of CS:GO abilities, with the 20-year old AWPer being second to none.

CS:GO commentator and expert Alex “Hawka” Hawkins has tried to answer, on exactly, which players could be the next big thing in the game of CS:GO. Hawkins base his analysis on stats from the ESEA MDL, which is a tournament format that for years have featured numerous talents and prospects. He uses relevant and in-depth stats to underline his statements to why one particular player could make it on the highest stage.

The players Hawkins believe could be the next big prospect in CS:GO

William "mezii" Merriman – Cloud9 – England - 22 years old

Igor "lollipop21k" Solodkov – Nemiga – Belarus – 24 years old

Shahar "flameZ" Shushan – Endpoint – Israel – 17 years old

Ivan "iM" Mihai – Nexus –Romania– Romanian – 21 years old

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iM

Player stats

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From Underdog to a Major MVP Candidate: The story of iM

Video: Super innovative boost on Overpass by GamerLegion

GamerLegion book a ticket to prominent $200.000 LAN

GamerLegion take first place at Europe RMR Open Qualifier 4

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Top prospect for 2021

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