Bad News Bears are the first casualty of the IEM Cologne play-in stage, the first CS:GO tournament being held on LAN since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. They fell short to LDLC 2-0 (16-9 on Inferno and 16-6 on Mirage) in the first round of the lower bracket.
With this result, the North Americans were eliminated without winning a single map in Cologne, Germany. Allan “Shakezullah” Hardeman’s team played mousesports in the opening round of the tournament and lost 16-7 on Nuke. Although they were one of the underdogs trying to qualify for IEM Cologne’s main event, North American fans were certainly hoping for them to put up a fight against some of the world’s best CS:GO teams.
Shakezullah, who’s been the in-game leader of Bad News Bears since May 31, said on Twitter that the poor showing was 100 percent his fault. “[I] didn’t do a good enough job leading up to this event preparing us,” the 23-year-old said. “Gonna work hard over this player break to make sure this isn’t what we look like at Malta [ESL Pro League season 14]. Thanks for the overwhelming support this event. Sorry everyone.”
Since Bad News Bears are still looking for an organization to represent, it was important for them to try to display some great Counter-Strike at IEM Cologne. The North Americans didn’t play well throughout the event and the LAN pressure might have affected them.
Given that they’re in Europe, they may stay a couple of days longer just to practice with European teams before coming back to North America. LDLC, on the other hand, will continue their run in the lower bracket, where they’ll play against the loser of FaZe vs. Complexity tomorrow at 9:45am CT.
