The field is set for the Legends Stage of the PGL Major, and NA has a smidgen of hope

The field is set for the Legends Stage of the PGL Major, and NA has a smidgen of hope.

Tomorrow, May 14th, marks the beginning of the Legends Stage in the PGL Major, the 2nd of 3 rounds of the tournament. 16 remaining teams enter the inferno and only 8 will come out the other side in this Swiss-Format style round. The next and final round, the Champion stage, will be a single-elimination bracket of the last 8 teams and begins on the 19th.

The Legends Stage will see multiple top 10 match-ups, as well as highly anticipated rematches between some of the top teams in the game. Reigning major champions NaVi (currently #2 in the rankings) will face off against the 6th ranked team in the world G2 in what will hopefully be a 3-map shootout between some of the best players in the world. Perhaps even more anticipated is the rematch of the ESL Pro League Season 15 Grand Final, between FaZe (#1) and ENCE (#3).

Elsewhere another top 10 match-up between Cloud9 (#4) and Outsiders (#10) has the potential to be a banger. A sneaky storyline of this match-up is that both rosters are results of the sanctions imposed on Russian esports organizations by the PGL in the wake of Russia’s psychotic adventures aka their aggressive invasion of Ukraine. Cloud9, a storied esports franchise that is also the only American organization to win a CS:GO Major, had not taken part in CS:GO competitions for over a year when they decided to buy Gambit’s talented roster of Russian players. Last time Cloud9 participated in CS:GO, they came back with a roster in 2020 that was graciously dubbed “The Colossus” by none other than their own General Manager. The Colossus folded after just 6 months due to ‘remote training struggles’ aka they played like shit. This former Gambit roster was playing impressively before switching orgs, proven by their number 4 ranking, so maybe now Cloud9 has the ‘Colossus’ they were looking for. Outsiders are also a squad of Russian talent that used to belong to a different organization, Virtus.Pro, before they too were hit with sanctions. The former Virtus.Pro roster has yet to have the benefit of being signed by an organization, so they decided to compete under the name of ‘Outsiders’ as an independent team. Russian players are still permitted to participate in competition, just not under the banner of a Russian organization.

Early in the morning at 6 AM is the match I am personally most hyped for, Liquid (#13) vs Heroic (#5). For those who don’t know, Liquid is the only team left in the tournament made up of American players (and one French). They will be coming in as heavy underdogs against Danish powerhouses Heroic but having just exercised past demons against other Danish side Astralis, Liquid will be hoping to show the world that NA can still keep up with the best. If Liquid manages to win they might actually shut up some of the “NA is dead” chirps from the Euro nerds across the Atlantic. At least until their next loss that they choke away in the final rounds.

The other teams representing the Western Hemisphere hail from Brazil, a region that simply refuses to stay down for too long. The wild and awesome Brazilian fan-base will be rooting for both of their teams in the Legends Stage: Imperial who goes against German side BIG, and FURIA going up against Spirit. Imperial qualified for the Legends stage with help from Legendary AWP-er (Sniper class) Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo. In Imperial’s elimination match of the Challenger’s stage, FalleN popped the FUCK off with 39 kills.