​French counter strike has been in a weird place for a while now but there’s some cautious optimism building ahead of the Katowice Major. For the first time in a while the scene is bringing in some fresh faces, with four of the ten players across their two teams set to make their Major debut.





Vitality

The majority of hopes for the French scene are currently pinned upon Vitality, and more specifically the young prodigious shoulders of ZywOo. Since the 18 year old made the step up to playing full time he became the one shining light in a year to forget for French fans, and in a team including two former Major winners has becoming the clear shining star.





The hype around the young man is reaching near unprecedented levels, and in some ways it’s easy to understand why. He passes the eye test and then some in almost every way imaginable; he consistently wows you with the AWP, the rifles and even on low economy rounds. His numbers are incredible too. At the two LANs he’s attended with Vitality so far he’s put up ratings of 1.49 and 1.36, those are numbers that we’re only used to seeing on the event long scale from your s1mples and your NiKos.





However, the context is vitally important (if you’ll excuse the pun). Those two aforementioned LANs were a DreamHack Open and the EU Minor. The best team they came up against was North, and it was a North who were just days from losing three straight maps to ViCi. He’s yet to prove how high a level he can play against top ten level teams. My gut is leaning towards the hype at the moment, but we just don’t know yet.





We’re about to find out though, and it’s one of the most compelling draws of the Challengers Stage. Is this guy the real deal elite level player? The Major will set the table for his trajectory through 2019, and in many ways Vitality’s dreams all rest on how he does.





Outside from ZywOo the question really appears to be as simple as who can step up as their number two player on the day? There has been no consistent second star up to this point; they have rotated somewhat between apex, RpK and NBK-. I’m hoping to see a little more consistency from that veteran trio at this stage, as them stepping up will be required later in the tournament.





The final member of the team is another relatively new name: ALEX. Replacing Happy for the lurk role, he seems to have slotted nicely into the team and is a definite upgrade. He hasn’t blown anybody away yet, but he’s done his job.





I think they’re going to make it through this stage fairly comfortably, even if ZywOo underwhelms against the top teams there’s enough lesser teams here that he’ll be comfortable against for the team to pick up the three wins necessary. Vitality’s performances against the stronger level of competition is what I’m most looking forward to seeing in this stage though. There’s questions that we’ll get answered.





Challengers Stage Prediction: 3-1

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G2

We haven’t seen a whole lot of G2 since they made the changes to their line-up bringing in the 3DMAX pairing and transferring the leadership of the team to shox. What little we have seen hasn’t been overly promising. They picked up a couple of solid results at the PLG Grand Slam over Hell Raisers and AVANGAR, but had a poor DreamHack Open losing to the then Bravado. Aside from that the only thing they have to hang their hat on is an online victory over their compatriots in Vitality to qualify for WESG.





It’s hardly enough to convince me that this G2 has turned the corner after not impressing throughout almost their entire run prior to the changes. As such they come into this Major with almost zero hype, which sounds bizarre to say given this team contains kennyS and shox but that’s where we find ourselves in 2019.





The limited data that we do have suggests that the new lineup has brought a slight uptick of form from body, but nothing particularly special. The two new additions, JaCkz and Lucky, are doing fine so far without being overly impressive either.





Really though this team’s quality lives and dies on the performances of Kenny and shox. Most years you’d have been more than happy to take your chances with that, but it hasn’t happened for them at any sort of consistent rate as of yet. You do feel with that pairing that they always have upset potential, but that feels limited slightly by shox having to carry the IGL role as well as that of a star fragger.





G2 might be the trickiest team to predict for this whole stage. They’ve been so underwhelming for so long that to back them to turn it around here seems foolish, but part of me still thinks that the class of kennyS and shox will shine through especially at this level even though they haven’t for a long time now. I have them to just about scrape through, but it will likely come down to if they get beneficial draws or not.





Challengers Stage Prediction: 3-2





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(Image credit: ESL)