ESL Pro League Season 21’s group stages are about to wrap up and one of the final matches left on the card is Team Falcons vs Eternal Fire.
Team Falcons looked the part of a potentially elite squad when the team popped off en route to a second-place finish in PGL Cluj-Napoca. If the group stage of ESL Pro League Season 21 is anything to go by, the team still has some work to do, though. While a win over Team Liquid hinted at continued success, the team found itself fighting for survival before long.
Eternal Fire, meanwhile, has been alternating convincing victories with narrow defeats. Now the teams are set to face off with their tournament lives on the line.
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Team Falcons and Eternal Fire will face off in a group stage elimination match in Counter-Strike’s biggest league; ESL Pro League. Both teams have a 2-2 record in the second group stage, with the winner going to the playoffs and the loser going home.
Team Falcons rebuilt its roster around Emil “Magisk” Reif in January, and the team has posted mixed results since. A finals run in PGL Cluj-Napoca hinted that the team was ready to break out, but it’s unclear whether that was a prelude of things to come or an aberration. The team is 2-2 in ESL Pro League Season 21 thus far, taking narrow wins over Team Liquid and Furia while taking losses to MOUZ and 3DMAX. Here is the team’s roster at the event:
Team Falcons is at its best on Mirage and Dust 2, though the team took a nasty 13-2 loss on Dust 2 to 3DMAX earlier in the event. Across all the other maps, Falcons has a record that’s close to even. Well, except for Anubis, as it hasn’t played there with this current roster.
Eternal Fire posts consistently solid placements in events, but doesn’t often win them. That’s been seen with a finals berth at BLAST Bounty Spring, a top-six finish in IEM Katowice, and a playoffs run in PGL Cluj-Napoca. It’s facing elimination in ESL Pro League Season 21 after beating Pain Gaming and MIBR, while losing against Team Liquid and 3DMAX. Here is the team’s roster:
Eternal Fire’s best maps are Nuke and Anubis. The team actively looks to play there, and has strongly positive results when it arrives there. It’s also strong on Mirage in recent months, and is roughly even on the other active duty maps.
Eternal Fire and Falcons have faced off three times since Falcons’ current roster came together. EF won two of those matches but its opponent won the latest, which was a 2-1 victory at PGL Cluj-Napoca.
Eternal Fire is a 1.67 favorite to beat Team Falcons, whose moneyline is sitting at 2.18. Lines shift for any number of reasons, but Falcons’ narrow victory over Furia likely undermined the team’s standing with bookmakers. Though the teams have roughly comparable recent results and Falcons has proven itself capable of beating Eternal Fire, struggling to put away a much lower-ranked team raises an eyebrow.
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Eternal Fire is rightly favored over Team Falcons, and there’s a good chance that the team wins here. The jury is still out on how good this Team Falcons is. While the verdict will likely come back as “very good,” Eternal Fire is also very good and is a surer thing here.
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