Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s top teams haven’t shuffled much since the middle of November, but Evil Geniuses’ move back to North America has left room for other teams to break into the rankings. The top three teams in Astralis, BIG Clan, and Natus Vincere retained their spots in the rankings, but FURIA made a big jump to the sixth place spot while Team Heroic fell off sharply after losses at IEM Beijing and the BLAST Premier Fall Showdown.
FURIA’s 2-1 win over G2 at DreamHack Winters Masters Europe gave the team a massive boost in the rankings this week. Its players showed nearly complete dominance over both G2 and North despite dropping a map in a group B best-of-three series. Vinicius “VINI” Figueiredo put up a 1.23 rating in the match, marking a standout performance that allowed FURIA to dominate the competition. The rest of FURIA performed just as well on the European stage. They made the case for a finals appearence at DH Masters against whichever team makes it out of the tournament’s group A.
FURIA hasn’t seemed affected by its move to Europe despite a few early bumps in the road at BLAST Premier Fall Series, and it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, either. FURIA is currently riding a five-game winstreak against top-tier opponenents including North, G2, and Team Liquid. These performances show that FURIA is indeed the real deal and is deserving of the number six spot on the list.
Even with Team Liquid’s early losses in Europe, the squad has performed reasonably well against Astralis and mousesports. Their 2-1 loss to FURIA allowed the Brazilian team to leapfrog the North Americans in the rankings, but putting away a strong MIBR team gave Liquid the jump they needed to gain a spot against the serious competition ahead of them. As Liquid becomes accustomed to the European flavor of competition once again, we could see one of North America’s top teams continue to improve through the winter season.
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