Astralis vs LDLC – ECS Season 7 Europe Week 1

ECS Season 7 will take place between 11 March and 9 May and the first week’s match program has been announced. In the single-elimination bracket, the Virtus.pro team will play with FaZe Clan, ForZe will face Ninjas in Pajamas, AVANGAR will face North, while Astralis will compete for victory against Team LDLC. Now, the online phase has been divided into five weeks – in each of them, eight teams will compete with each other in a single elimination ladder in which only BO3 matches will take place. The winners of the first three weeks from Europe and North America will secure a direct promotion to the lan finals. ECS Season 7 Finals will take place at the SSE Arena Wembley Stadium in the UK between 6-9 June. The prize pool of the tournament where 8 teams will compete is exactly 500,000 dollars.

The match between LDLC and Astralis gives us an exciting opportunity to have a look at the French organization. Once LDLC was in the top 15 in the world rankings and now the team is in shambles and is up against arguably the best team in the world, Astralis.

Astralis

The Danes won the second major in a row with the current squad, and four team players (except for Magisk) won the third tournament from Valve. So, the team repeated the record held by Fnatic. For the entire championship, Astralis played 11 maps, out of which the side lost only one, which was in a bo3 match against Renegades. While Ninjas in Pyjamas, MIBR and ENCE eSports lost to the team in the playoffs without winning a single game of the series.

Astralis domination on the competitive scene has been going on for over a year – in 2018 the team won 10 championships. At IEM Katowice Major 2019, the Danes extended the series of victories at Nuke, where the squad has won last 34 games. Title victories of one team can get boring. However, their superior style of play is yet to get beaten by any team in the competitive landscape. Therefore, don’t be surprised if Astralis wins every Major title in the next six to twelve months.

Rich Lads

Emile Magisk Rafe was recognized as the best player in the tournament. On March 5, the Dane turned 21, and thanks to the major, he has already become a millionaire by the prize money earned from the competitive landscape. His teammates – Andreas “Xyp9x” Hoislet and Peter dupreeh Rasmussen have won over $ 1.4 million. Nicolai device Reedtz is quite close to this amount as he has won $ 1.3 million while Lukas Rossander gla1ve – $ 1.25 million. According to esportsearnings.com, none of the other professional players in CS: GO has not yet surpassed the million in prize money.

Astralis is not without reason called the greatest team in the history of Counter-Strike. The team won two majors successively in an era of the most serious competition on the stage, when organizations pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for players, hire analysts, coaches, psychologists, set up training bases, and so on – as in a big sport.

LDLC

The Rise

Over the past 6 months, the best result of the well-known eSports organization was finishing at 5th-6th places in the IEM Chicago 2018 tournament. For this, the French “five” had to go through a difficult qualifications path, participating in the GG.BET Shuffle tournament, to get a slot for Intel Extreme Masters. To make their way to the competition, they left behind the top teams from Denmark – OpTic Gaming and Heroic.

Adventures in Chicago began with a meeting with formidable FaZe Clan. On the Mirage map, the French barely lost – 16:14. Now they faced a fight in the bottom bracket and a possible quarter-final run. Former member, AmaNEk played a key role in the victories over Renegades, North and NRG Esports – he was absolutely unstoppable, earning an average rating of 1.32.

In the quarterfinals, the team from France met with Team Liquid. Having won the first map and leading the second after the first half with a score of 11-4, they could not seal off the win, allowing the Americans to make a comeback. The final result is the 5-6th place and while in the hltv.org ranking the side climbed to 12th place.

The Fall

This was followed by unsuccessful results in online tournaments, as well as failure to qualify for a major. The team saw its captain – ALEX, going to Team Vitality. Behind him, AmaNEk informed the team that he is not going to renew the contract with the organization. On Twitter, he said that he does not have plans to create his own team and wants to take a short break. Now the team was left with three members in the roster: LOGAN, devoduvek, and to1nou.

In place of the departed players came xms and matHEND whom we might see against Astralis as they are temporary signings. Since, at the end of August last year, xms announced that he was leaving the professional scene. It is unclear how serious his intentions are to return. As for matHEND, everything is much sadder – being an in-game leader, he never achieved any high results and is not very stable in the shooting. There is an opinion that players can disperse in different organizations in the coming weeks.

Final Verdict

This meeting between Astralis and LDLC will be a brutal encounter for the LDLC side. Astralis will probably completely annihilate the French side and will be eyeing for the Lan spot. We see no outcome where this LDLC side could even take a single map from the Danes. So, we advise you to put your money on a comfortable win of Astralis.

Astralis 2 – 0 LDLC

Odds on bookmakers

Bookmakers	Astralis Odds		LDLC Odds
	European	American	European	American
GG.bet	1.01	-10000.00	11.88	+1088.00
1Xbet	1.01	-10000.00	21.00	+2000.00
Rivalry	1.02	-5000.00	10.93	+993.00
Betway	1.03	-3333.33	9.00	+800.00