Week 1 of Stage 2 took place last week, which included the kick-off of all four regions and a NA League super-week.
Following most of these games were interviews with the victorious teams, so for those that missed them, we've summarised the best quotes and responses from the players below.
Jump to:
- EU League -- "I think Flores may be the strongest operator right now"
- NA League -- "Player for player, we're just a better team than them"
- Brasileirão -- "At the Invitational, [NiP's] roam clear was not that good"
- APAC Leagues -- "In APAC, an aggressive play style is way too risky"
All the quotes below are extracts of the interview, not the full conversation. A timestamp to the full interview can be found linked with the quote.
EU League
The European League started on Thursday and had a number of surprise results, while other teams performed as if there hadn't been a break at all.
BDS Esport was the most at east, taking down its fellow Six Invitational (SI) competitor Team Empire 7-0. While both teams finished SI in joint-seventh, the return to online play looked like a return to Stage 1-Empire, allowing BDS to win cleanly.
After the win, Bryan "Elemzje" Tebessi stated the following about the newly available operator of Flores:
One of the traditional rivals to BDS in G2 Esports beat the other Russian squad of Virtus.pro in an equally impressive 7-1 scoreline.
This match was the top-flight debut for both Hungry and Jonka on G2, leading Ben "CTZN" McMillan to summarise their roles as follows:
Finally, in Europe, following a redesign of the roster in March and a close 7-5 win over the third seed of Cowana Gaming last week, Valentin "risze" Liradelfo stated the following about the growth of the new lineup:
NA League
Over in North America, so far it looks like a return to 2020, with TSM firmly on top with two wins, followed by DZ and SSG with their new players, while the Stage 1 winners of OxG and the Soniqs got off to a weaker start.
The LAN League format merged with the home casts did, unfortunately, limit the number of interviews that were available, but some interesting remarks were still made by Disrupt's newest coach of Kevin "Easilyy" Skokowski.
After finishing fourth during the last stage and ending last week's games 3-7 vs TSM and 7-4 vs XSET, Easilyy stated the following about his new role, their opponents, and their new player of Dpfire:
Brasileirão
Following this, last weekend saw the BR6 League start-up after teams such as NiP, Liquid, MIBR, and FaZe had undeniably proved this to be the best region in the World at the Six Invitational.
Straight from becoming world champions at the Six Invitational, NiP returned to the BR6 as an absolute force of nature.
7-1 wins over both of the top organizations from 2020 -- Liquid and MIBR -- is a performance unseen from the Ninjas in the past, with Julio "Julio" Giacomelli crediting their win to their improvements in roam clearing:
Next up was Gabriel "cameram4n" Hespanhol from FaZe Clan and Arthur "TchubZ" Martins, the coach of Team oNe who both spoke about what they thought of the new operator of Flores:
This was following FaZe's 7-5 victory over MIBR (who played with Budega subbed-in for FelipoX), with FaZe going on to lose 7-2 to Liquid the following day.
Team oNe, meanwhile, won both their games in a fairly tight fashion. An 8-7 against W7M Gaming on Oregon and a comeback 7-5 against FURIA on Kafe were sufficient to mark a successful week for them.
This is what Lorenzo "Lagonis" Volpi had to say about that latter matchup after they had previously beaten FURIA in a more convincing 7-3 fashion on Consulate at the Six Invitational:
Finally, after two key games for Team Liquid -- the previously mentioned 1-7 against NiP and 7-2 vs FaZe -- Thiago "xS3xyCake" Reis gave an insight into how they play Oregon and their specific roles:
Finally, looking back to their 7-1 defeat, this is what Nesk had to say about the result:
APAC Leagues
Over in APAC, a total of eight matches took place across the North and South regions, all of which included post-match interviews.
In North, the big result was Cloud9's 0-7 loss to DWG in a 7-0 sweep. Elsewhere, Japan dominated in the rest of the games with GUTS, FAV, and CAG all winning by fairly narrow margins.
Concerning the interviews, the best response was probably from CYCLOPS' Italian coach of Riccardo "Hybrid" Massimino Font.
Following an 8-6 win over Fnatic in their first game since their group-stage exit from SI, he stated the following about their change in play styles:
CAG's SI performance. Day 3 saw them lose two 7-8, and just one win from either game would've sent them through to the playoffs.
In the South meanwhile, eyes were on Invictus Gaming (ex-Giants Gaming) who came in with a new organisation and a new player in Jo (formerly Histoire).
This team took down Wildcard 7-3, as they had also come in with a new player and coach in Milostka and r0usty.
Glen "Lunarmetal" Suryasaputra stated the following about how the team got ready for Stage 2:
Elsewhere, 7th Heaven beat ORDER and Knights surprised the reigning APAC Champions of Elevate by taking them down 7-5.
Finally, we almost saw another clean sweep, as the Chiefs lost 1-7 to QConfirm after having beaten QC 7-0 in Stage 1. As the only lineup change saw QC replace Roldinii for Darkk, this is what Sillapakorn "Lycolis" Dokmaikhaw had to say on why they opted to make the change:
Week 2 will kick off its games tonight with the EUL, followed by NAL on Tuesday and Wednesday, APAC on Wednesday and Thursday, and then the BR6 tournament over the weekend.
SiegeGG will be covering all these tournaments as usual so check back for stats, news, and highlights for your favorite teams!