After a week off because of the StarSeries Season 3 Finals, Season 5 of the ESL Pro League was back in action this week as teams across Europe scrambled for wins in the final weeks of the regular season. Although not much has changed in the top 5, some teams might have missed their ticket to the Finals come June. Here is how Week 7 played out.
After coming off of its first-ever offline tournament championship at the StarSeries Season 3 Finals, FaZe Clan dazzled, and it finished the week off with a thrilling double-overtime win over North. The series started on Cache, where FaZe Clan put its foot down on defense for an 11-4 lead but struggled to close the map in a 16-14 win.
On Mirage, North crushed FaZe on offense for an 11-4 lead at the half. North only needed four rounds to split the series, but FaZe Clan pushed back, and Finn "karrigan" Andersen sent the game into overtime with a triple kill on the scrappy B-bombsite play. Both teams traded rounds in the overtime play with karrigan once again forcing another overtime run with a triple kill flank on the A-bombsite. Despite North's efforts, FaZe Clan pulled off the 25-22 win.
The only team to survive the fray without a loss was French squad G2, which went 4-0 in Week 7. After a slow start to Season 5 of ESL Pro League, G2 is now knocking on the top five after a blowout performance over NiP and mousesports. G2 left no room for error for NiP and dominated each half of Cobblestone and Train for the 2-0 sweep on Wednesday. On Thursday, G2 faced mousesports, who currently sit third in the European standings, and earned another convincing series sweep.
Fnatic finished with a strong week, only losing one game to earn the sixth position in the European standings. Fnatic went up against Heroic on Tuesday in its first series and closed the first game with a 16-11 win on Train. Fnatic looked to sweep the series, but its performance on Cobblestone was nothing but hard to watch as the Swedes took a grueling 16-6 loss to even the series. Fnatic had a day to recover before taking on HellRaisers on Thursday in a successful series to end the week. Fnatic took down HellRaisers handily on Cobblestone before barely edging out a win over its opponent on Cache to close the series with a 16-14 win.
Virtus.pro had a dismal performance throughout the StarSeries Season 3 Finals, and not much changed in Week 7 of the ESL Pro League. It kicked off the action with LDLC on Tuesday and a crushing 0-2 series loss on Nuke and Inferno. Virtus.pro came back stronger on Thursday with a better start against Ninjas in Pyjamas and took a commanding 16-6 Game 1 win on Nuke. The series went downhill for Virtus.pro after that as NiP surged on offense in the second half of Game 2 for a 16-9 win to even the series 1-1 on Cobblestone. With just one win on the week, Virtus.pro is now 10th in the standings.
Astralis remains No. 1 in the standings after Week 7, followed by Natus Vincere, mousesports, North and FaZe Clan to round out the top 5. Week 8 will begin at 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday.