Mousesports is once again starting to look the part of one of Europe’s best Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams.
The squad took first place at DreamHack Open Tours 2019, besting Valiance to take the top prize. It is a key victory for the rapidly developing team, and one that hints that big things might be on the horizon.
The first game of the grand finals was a competitive one. Though Train is often a map defined by blowout halves on the CT side, Mouz and Valiance played evenly across the entire game, matching streak for streak. It was looking to come down to the wire until Ă–zgĂĽr “woxic” Eker led an absurd two-versus-five clutch to seal up the first game for Mouz 16-12.
Mousesports managed to close things out from there, knocking out Valiance on Mirage. Though Valiance looked the part of a serious threat on the scoreboard, the team was constantly working from behind as Mousesports gained an early lead and never really let Valiance back into the game. Valiance dealt with an economic disadvantage from start to finish, only gaining a monetary edge over Mouz in a few rounds. That made for a 16-11 win for Mousesports to close out the series.
This is an important moment for the organization.
Despite being one of CS:GO’s most storied brands, Mousesports fell on hard times in late 2018. Though the squad hit a few high notes during the year, Mouz dealt with serious consistency issues for several months. There were some high points for the team, but when the one of the biggest lows came at the Europe Minor and kept the squad out of the 2019 Katowice Major, it led to a hard reset of the team’s roster shortly after that saw the team rebuild around veteran player Chris “chrisJ” de Jong and new captain Finn “karrigan” Andersen.
The new Mousesports was unveiled in March, but hasn’t been especially active in the weeks since. The handful of appearances the team has made have been solid, as they placed in the top six at Intel Extreme Masters XIV Sydney and topped their group in ESL Pro League Season 9 Europe. Though DreamHack Open Tours didn’t feature especially intense competition, Mousesports looked strong throughout the event and did manage to take wins over Avangar and Windigo Gaming.
Mousesports still has a lot of work ahead of it in terms of reestablishing the organization as one of Europe’s best, but the early outlook is strong. The team will look to earn a spot in the Esports Championship Series Season 7 Finals and will head from there to the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals. Both of those are great opportunities for Mouz to make some noise.
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