ESL Pro League S9 Europe: preview
The Born to Win will start their journey April 19th!
A few days after the BLAST Pro Series Miami, we have another tournament to enjoy with participation of our team — ESL Pro League S9 Europe. Let's see what we should expect from the competition in Leicester.
As is known, the format of the regular part of the ESL Pro League tournament has undergone significant changes. The main change concerns the fact that from the ninth season, all matches in the European and North American division will be in the LAN format.
Thus, each of the above regions represents sixteen teams, which are divided into four groups. The format of the distribution of spots in the final part of the tournament varies from region to region. So, eight teams from Europe will get to the ESL Pro League S9 Finals, another six slots will be given to American region, and the last two slots will go to the Asia-Pacific region.
The prize fund of the qualifying stage has not yet been announced. The venue for the qualifying matches will be the ESL UK Studio, located in Leicester.
Now let's take a look at the format of the ESL Pro League S9 Europe. The competition now includes two stages. In the first one, four teams in each group will play with each other in a circular system, the winner will go further, and the loser will have to leave the qualifying round. The rest of the teams will go to the second stage, where the fights will take place in two groups and two teams from each group will enter the LAN-finals. All fights will last up to two victories.
Following the draw, the Born to Win ended up in group C. If in the first round 
Natus Vincere has to face not the scariest rival — 
Windigo Gaming, then they will have to face more serious opponents — 
fnatic and 
G2 Esports.
| Teams | Start time | Match page | |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 19th: | |||
| NAVI.GG.BET00 Windigo Gaming |
18:20 | ||
| April 20th: | |||
| NAVI.GG.BET00 G2 Esports |
18:20 | ||
| April 21st | |||
| NAVI.GG.BET00 fnatic |
18:20 | ||
The Bulgarian team has already managed to surprise everyone this year, taking the trophy at WESG. To achieve this, Windigo had to defeat the Brazilian team 
MIBR (2 : 1) in the quarter-finals, which earlier at the IEM Katowice Major, took the 3rd-4th places. In the semifinal, the Bulgarians beat the G2 (0: 2), and in the grand final, Windigo won with a score of 2: 1 over 
AGO. The victory at the WESG brought $ 500,000 to the Bulgarian team! In addition, the guys recently successfully overcame the qualifying stages of two DreamHack tournaments — DreamHack Masters Dallas and DreamHack Open Tours. Thus, in the first round, our top five is awaited by the enemy, which should be taken seriously!
The next opponent of Natus Vincere will be the French team G2 Esports. As you know, after the Major, the French made a reshuffle: AmaNEk replaced bodyy. All thought, with the latter, G2 still had to perform at WESG due to the rules of the tournament, and the guys took the third place. After the renewal of the G2 lineup, the top five took part only in the closed qualifier of DH Masters Dallas — and successfully completed the competition in second place. The French top five also performed at the Belgian Charleroi Esports Championship. In Belgium, the G2 reached the semifinals, where they lost to Team Vitality.
NAVI will complete the first round of the qualifying round with a match against fnatic. As you remember, the paths of our team intersected quite recently with the Swedes, in the final of the StarSeries S7, and then the yellow-black won with the score 3:0. It is curious that since July 2018, fnatic has only won one map in the matches against Natus Vincere — at ELEAGUE CS: GO Premier 2018. The statistics of personal encounters over the past year looks quite depressing: one victory for the Swedish five and thirteen losses. We hope our guys this time around too will overcome fnatic in Leicester!
There was little time for rest and preparation for the ESL Pro League S9 Europe after the BLAST Pro Series Miami 2019, but we hope that NAVI will find their game and get to the ESL Pro League LAN tournament in the first round of the qualifying stage! #NAVINATION
