Cloud9 becomes first North American 'CS:GO' team to win ESL Pro League
Cloud9 won its first ESL Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Pro League championship Sunday night, defeating last season's defending champions SK Gaming 2-1.
Despite SK Gaming's hometown advantage in Brazil, North America's Cloud9 steamrolled through the squad in the Pro league Season 4 finals, taking home $200,000 of the $600,000 prize pool. Cloud9 is the first North American team to win a big international CS:GO tournament since Team SoloMid won the PGL Championship Series in October 2015.
C9's Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek and Jake "Stewie2" Yip led the team to an overwhelming victory along with newest member Timothy "Autimatic" Ta, making play after play to upset SK. After a close loss in overtime to SK Gaming in the first game, Cloud9 was absolutely unstoppable, taking the next two maps Mirage and Dust2 16-6 and 16-5 for a swift victory in São Paulo.
Despite losing to Cloud9, SK Gaming's Gabriel "Fallen" Toledo was awarded MVP of the finals.
"I don't think I was MVP of these finals, but guys, thank you anyways," he said after receiving the award.
In the nine-week online season of Pro League, Cloud9 finished in first place in the North American region, then decimated OpTic Gaming and edged out Mousesports in the playoffs to head into the finals.
SK Gaming finished the online season in third place behind Immortals in North America. SK Gaming played with a stand-in for Fer in the first few weeks of the season. With Fer, SK automatically qualified for the semifinals and beat Ninjas in Pyjamas in a close 2-1 series to make it to the finals.
SK won the Pro League Season 3 championship and are the reigning Major champions in CS:GO, but the squad has not returned to full form since changing organizations from Luminosity to SK Gaming.
Cloud9 hasn't seen much success in the international circuit in recent years until Sunday night. The team signed Stewie2K in January this year and Autimatic in August, rounding out the roster and making them tough contenders in tournaments.
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With this victory at ESL Pro League, the members of Cloud9 have not only put themselves back on the map, they've put North American Counter-Strike back on the map.
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