All their teams aren't as good as they were before for an entire year now, and their best players are still in CS:GO so they don't have a superstar player to carry them out.
I don't think EMEA is bad, but we are missing a Superteam to Carry EMEA alone just like NA had with Optic, BR had with Loud and Koreia had with DRX.
EMEA is feeling the Lack of FPX/Gambit.
I mean we haven't see the on paper top 3 EMEA teams yet.
And even outside of that I was just thinking that top EMEA talent is really packed right now like just think about it. Arguably top 5 EMEA teams last year were FPX, Fnatic, TL, M3C and Guild and where they are now:
FPX: Suygetsu(NaVi), Shao(NaVi), ANGE1(NaVi), Zyppan(NaVi) -> Ardiis imported to NA
FNC: Derke(FNC), Boaster(FNC), Alfajer(FNC) -> Mistic and Enzo to tier 2
TL: Jamppi(TL), Soulcas(TL), Dimasick (TL 6th man) -> Scream and Nivera left for weaker team with Scream IGLing, no hope
M3C: nAts(TL), Redgar(TL), Chronicle(FNC), Sheydos(KOI) -> D3ffo/Jady no longer in
GLD: Leo(FNC), Sayf(TL), Trexx(KOI), Koldamenta(KOI) -> Russ to tier 2
so pretty much arguably last year's 5 best EMEA teams are now split into like 3 teams aka Fnatic, Liquid and NaVi. While some went to KOI, but KOI also has starxo who didn't look too good last year and Wolfen who came from tier 2. And ofc there are other players like nukkye, hoody, Cloud, Molsi, Twisten etc who looked good, but again are on teams that have a lot to prove before they can be considered top.
to be fair BBL, Heretics & KC were all expected to go out early. KC only won first round bc they went against an inexperienced China team. Only KOI & Giants losing can be considered somewhat disappointing, but not so much since they went out against one of the teams expected to win it all.
The top 3 EMEA teams (at least on paper) are all on the Omega bracket so only after seeing them can we really judge EMEA as a league.
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