The ESL Pro League finals have historically been the battle of the regions - North America and Europe. Over the years, North American CS has been called out by fans and experts around the world for not living up to the European level. However, looking at ESL Pro League, it turns out that two out of the four previous Pro League finals saw American players lifting the Championship trophy in the end. Has NA CS emerged enough to repeat their success at Pro League once again?
Looking back at the history of Pro League it may come as a surprise that in three of the four seasons a representative of the North American division made their way to the grand finals and even come out on top on two occasions. However, the overall performance of European teams at the season finals appears dominant on paper, as eleven of the sixteen top four finish are accounted by European teams. Yet, this only resulted in two EU Championships for Fnatic.
Group A of the Season 5 finals in Dallas end of this month can easily be described as "the group of death". Featuring all Pro League Champions up to this point - Fnatic, SK Gaming (formerly Luminosity Gaming) and Cloud9 - in combination with a revived and on fire G2 Esports and Brazilians Immortals, almost automatically guarantees an interesting finals event.
On the other hand, this creates an amazing opportunity for teams like Liquid who have made to the past three season finals but not once have they managed to reach the top four. They are joined by the European line-ups of North, Na'Vi and mousesports who have all not managed to live up to the expectations at their very recent event attendances. OpTic Gaming however, has just come out of a strong performance at IEM Sydney and may have the chance to finally make it into the top 4 at the Pro League finals as well.
Let us know who you think will take the title!
Tickets to the season finals in Dallas are available - join us in the legendary CS location as we witness Europe's and North America's best teams compete for the ESL Pro League Season 5 championship!
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