We’ve reached the end of the ESL Pro League S21 Group Stage, with three teams nabbing the final Playoff spots of the event. You’ve read the title, you already know who made it – let’s take a look at how they all secured their places in the next stage, shall we?
Liquid overcome spirited 3DMAX
Credit: Luc Bouchon | ESL
Team Liquid were able to pick up the first of the remaining three Playoff berths, in what was a surprisingly competitive series against 3DMAX. Even for this inconsistent Liquid roster, I figured this would be an easy 2:0, but I had underestimated the massive leaps 3DMAX have made since bringing in bodyy. The Frenchmen put up a spirited performance against Liquid, eventually falling 2:1 and running out of steam at the finish line.
It just all seemed to go right in terms of Liquid’s standard win conditions. With ultimate showing up, it’s difficult for Liquid to lose, really. And when you have an IGL that can put up fragging numbers like Twistzz here, again, they’ll be tough to beat.
Wicadia and woxic show hands Eternal Fire the win over Falcons
Credit: Helena Kristiansson | ESL
After it seemed like Falcons turned a corner by reaching the Final of PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025 last month, it’s back to disappointment for the team after they failed to qualify for the Playoffs of ESL Pro League S21. It was an energizing win for Eternal Fire in a back-and-forth series, giving the Turkish team a strong result to celebrate heading into the Quarter-Finals. It feels like Eternal Fire have had a slight slump of late, so to still qualify out of the ESL Pro League Group Stage is still a good result.
One thing is for sure: Eternal Fire will be thanking their lucky stars that they had Wicadia and woxic today. A mix of youth and experience, this duo absolutely terrorized Falcons across all three maps of this series, carrying even as IGL MAJ3R struggled to find impact of his own. If these two play like this against everyone, who can stop Eternal Fire?
G2 offer too much for GamerLegion
Credit: ESL
The latest iteration of the ever-evolving GamerLegion roster has made some strong strides of late, but G2 turned out to be too much, too soon. There’s no shame in that, but this really was one-way traffic in a 2:0 series that only ever had one winner written all over it.
So, what was the difference here? I think you already know – m0NESY, of course. He played like a man on a mission in every round, putting up a 48-25 scoreline to help G2 romp to victory here. For context, only 46 rounds were played in the series, so that’s more than a kill a round on average throughout. And just to drill home how big the AWP difference was in this series, GamerLegion’s sl3nd managed a 13-32 scoreline across both maps. Not exactly winning numbers.
Now we have our ESL Pro League S21 Quarter-Final matches locked in, you can see the matchups below:
- Eternal Fire vs. Team Spirit
- MOUZ vs. G2
- Vitality vs. Team Liquid
- NAVI vs. The MongolZ