Though the Pro League finals were undoubtedly the biggest event of December, the race between tournament organizers for the coveted year-ending spot led to a car crash of a schedule with quite a few more events coming up in rapid succession. From a fan perspective, this is all good – but what to make of the prospects of the different teams, scattered across the wind and continents playing at very different events after going up against one another in Odense? Here’s all you need to know going into the two tournaments starting later today.

BLAST Pro Series: Global Final 2019

What a mess this year has been for RFRSH. A slate of poor PR, tone-deaf decisions, a catastrophic event in LA, an outright cancelled one in Lisbon, plus having to cut Astralis loose, at least on the baseline level. With this, they limp into the global final after a circuit of six overall events, a double-elimination best-of-three bracket where the seeding gifted us yet another Astralis-Liquid match in the semis.

NiP: bow out with grace

It’s pretty much an open secret at this point that f0rest is slated to join the Dignitas project alongside his old partner in crime GeT_RiGhT, and the continued uncertainties about the roster clearly had its effect on the side. There’s no getting around the fact that Ninjas have been woefully inconsistent since the player break. Crashing out of the Berlin Major, failing to qualify for the Pro League finals, not even making top four amongst the minnows at the V4 event: singularly awful results. Their spot at the ECS Season 8 finals came off the back of wins over Heretics, BIG and m1x, with a solitary win over AVANGAR all they had to show for their efforts.

And yet, they made it to the playoffs of back-to-back big LANs, losing to Fnatic in Malmö and scoring a best-of-three win against Evil Geniuses at StarSeries & i-League Season 8 Finals before somehow finding a way to lose to MIBR. The holding pattern can’t last much longer, and they are clearly by far the weakest team at the event. Though FaZe are there for the taking, the realistic goal has to be an early elimination without humiliation.

Prediction: 4th place

FaZe Clan: rage against the dying of the light

Weirdly, it already almost feels appropriate to talk about this FaZe lineup in the past tense. What have they accomplished together since the arrival of coldzera? Not much. What are the chances they can conjure some sort of team spirit or line up behind a real IGL? Again, not much. What are their chances at the BLAST Pro Series global finals? I’ll leave this one up to you, dear reader.

Boy oh boy would it be hilarious if they found a way to lose to NiP though.

Prediction: 3rd place

Read more: NiKosports 2.0 – why FaZe Clan needs to change

Team Liquid: stabilize or fall

What to make of Liquid as a whole? Say what you will about their Scrödinger’s era which seems to change its state based on observation, they did go on an incredible run of LAN series wins while Astralis was mostly dormant. And yet, with the Danes winning both majors of the year, once again racking up a dominant overall scoreline against them by the end of 2019, you have to wonder whether their accomplishments will be treated as a mere intermezzo. Worse yet, there’s the real possibility they might be thinking the same way themselves. NAF pretty much hints at this in his wide-ranging interview with HLTV, all but handing over the crown to Astralis in their direct matchup. Liquid’s rise and fall seems to closely match their confidence levels, and one has to wonder whether they can find their mojo again. Going out in the quarterfinals in Odense won’t help that. No matter what, it will be fun to watch them go up against the Danes again. Those games are always exciting.

Prediction: 2nd place

Read more: The CS:GO king, the princes and the pretenders

Astralis: tighten that grip again

In some ways, it’s just another sign of greatness that a semi-final finish is treated as a huge disappointment. Besides, gla1ve and co. have a historically bad record on home soil, and the way they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory had a lot to do with the fact that they ran up against their ex-IGL who completely got into their head at the tail end of the series.

In the final analysis, Astralis’ performance here will determine whether all this is just spin or a realistic assessment of their showing at the Pro League finals. They are not back to their pristine best, but in most cases, it was more than enough. With a great individual matchup against Liquid and two vastly inferior teams on the other side of the bracket, this is their event to lose.

Prediction: 1st place

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Though it’s much more of a fun, laid-back event with a fun atmosphere and a lot of best-of-one matches, it’s worth keeping an eye on this one as well. Last time around, Vitality pretty much announced their arrival to the top tier with a win over Liquid, and this outing is made all the more interesting by OG’s debut and mousesports’ massive increase in stature off the back of their title run at Odense.

OG: crush the placement matches

It’s tough to gauge the overall potential of the OG side. An undeniably great in-game leader and a reliable support player, both with a lot to prove: it seemed like a start of a top-tier setup when the rumors began to pile up after the Berlin Major.

Then the rest of the names came in.

This is not meant to be a diss on valde and ISSAA, players brimming with potential but not exactly bolstering a cabinet full of top-tier performances, let alone trophies. And then there’s mantuu, the unknown unknown of the side, who clearly wasn’t their first choice to round out the quintet. An odd international mix that took a lot longer to assemble than expected and isn’t exactly what they planned from the start – in some ways, this would be reason enough to dismiss this enterprise. However, Aleksib has a proven track record of making something out of nothing, and it will be fascinating to see what he managed to assemble from these parts. A strong showing here would be a sign of real intent – and the opposite would kill pretty much all the hype.

Prediction: 2nd place