The ESL Italia Summer Championship consisted of a Bo3 league format which took place over the last few months to decide the top 4 teams in Italy. These teams will now play at the Vodaphone Theatre in Milan, Italy to compete for their slice of the €4,500 prize pool.
Who is Competing
The tournament’s bracket via Liquipedia
The best-known team coming into the tournament will be EnD Gaming with the roster of Alation, Peak, Torok, Hunter and Fratelli. EnD is the most successful Italian team to date with the current team finishing 4th in Season 7 of Challenger League as well as holding the current title of “Champions of Italy” after defeating IGP Clan Chimera during the grand finals of the Winter 2017 Championship. Previously the core of this roster played in EU Pro League way back in Season 1, in which they finished 8th under the name dat fLAM3RS. Most recently the team also qualified as the #1 seed for this LAN after an undefeated online season meaning they are by far the favourites going into the LAN Finals.
“Tomorrow is the big day! The finals of the EIC will take place at the Vodafone Theatre in Milan, if you are in the area you can not miss it!”
The second most successful team playing would be iDomina eSports who qualified with the roster of voodoo, Yahiko, Strikee, forese and RaZoR as the second seed. The roster has shown themselves to be some of the best players in Italy after finishing 3rd during the previous EIC event last year with the organisation previously competing during Season 1 of Pro League on Xbox. For this event they'll hope to knock out their main regional rivals, EnD Gaming, after their 10-3 thrashing earlier in the month.
From right to left: Razor, Forese, Strike, Voodoo and Yahiko
Outplayed meanwhile qualified in 3rd place after losses to just the two previous teams. With the roster of Sloppy, mazeeK, Nate, N3M3SIS and Chinook, Outplayed are a relatively new team on the scene that will be hoping to make a name for themselves at this event after the org finished just outside of the LAN qualification spots during IEC 2017. To accomplish this Outplayed will first need to defeat iDomina eSports in their semifinal in a rematch of their own 10-3 loss almost 3 months ago.
The final team invited to this event is Cyberground Gaming’s squad consisting of Falathar, Pyro, Wildcard, MAMMI and Flamey. The team will face an uphill battle for most of the tournament as they have already lost to the other three teams during the online season of EIC 2018 and so, as fourth seed, will need to play against the favourites, EnD Gaming, in their very first match.
We spoke to Strikee (from iDomina), Sloppy (from Outplayed) and Wildcard (from Cyberground Gaming) to get their thoughts on the upcoming matches:
What is your objective for this LAN final?
Wildcard: Just win, we went here to surprise everybody!
Strikee: We'll try to play our best to not let anyone down.
Sloppy: The objective is to win, but we think that also winning only the first match (against iDomina eSports) would be a great result.
Question for Wildcard: For some of you this is your first LAN event tomorrow you have to face the champions of the last season. What do you think is more important in a match with this level of difficulty - the team’s mentality or prepared strats?
Wildcard: The mentality is everything and mostly do not get too much worried or everything will fall apart, but also the strats are important for a team that wants to go far.
Question for Strikee: The team picked you (Strikee) up at the beginning of the season, and you ended the online season at the second place right behind EnD; how did youintegrate into the group?
Strikee: From the beginning I really felt well with the team, because i already played with some of them so the team's synergy was immediately high!
Question for Sloppy: You qualified for the finals on the last day of the online season; are you happy with your performance so far and how do you feel for the match of tomorrow?
Sloppy: Satisfied, we are united as a team and we hope we will do well during these finals.
When are the Games?
The games kick off tonight at 6 PM CEST and will see EnD Gaming vs Cyberground Gaming take place followed by iDomina eSports vs Outplayed. Then tomorrow, July 1st, the Grand Finals and 3rd place playoff will be played from 6 PM onwards
Where Can You Watch the Games?
You can watch these matches on the esl_it Twitch account from 18:00PM casted by the Italian casters of Edoardo “Eddie” Cianciosi and Giulio “JhonsonTV” Gungui. Alternatively, you can watch the games streamed in English by mzo and GieTe on the esl_r6s Twitch channel.
We spoke to JhonsonTV about the event and tournament in general:
What do you think can be improved in the EIC, from an organisational point of view?
At the organization level there has been an incredible improvement but, we are in Italy so there is still a lot of work to do.
Who do you think is going to win this final?
As a caster I can't actually support no one but I think EnD is going to win again because the level of preparation and the cohesion that there is in their team is way higher than the other teams.
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