Astralis beat Team Liquid in a long best-of-three series yesterday at the ECS season eight grand finals in Texas. Both CS:GO teams didn’t have much time to rest after the match, however, because they immediately had to fly to Odense, Denmark to play in the ESL Pro League season 10 finals.
Liquid’s general manager, Steve Perino, said his team will likely arrive for EPL just one hour ahead of their first game.
This isn’t the first time this year that teams didn’t have a chance to rest between Counter-Strike events. The exact same situation happened two months ago after ESL One New York on Sept. 29. Evil Geniuses defeated Astralis in the grand finals and both teams had to immediately travel to Sweden for DreamHack Masters Malmö.
EG struggled at that event and finished at the bottom with weaker teams like TYLOO and Team Envy. Astralis had better luck since they won their initial matches, which granted them some time to rest. But Fnatic beat them in the semifinals, giving Astralis an acceptable placement in that tournament given the circumstances.
Some CS:GO pros are already talking about the professional circuit’s busy calendar. Astralis’ captain, Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander, told HLTV that they’ll probably feel extremely jetlagged in Odense.
“I mean, we have to wait and see how we are going to do, but I think it is pretty sad that it is scheduled like this,” gla1ve said.
The in-game-leader also hinted that Astralis may skip one of these events in the future, even if they’re finals like ECS and ESL Pro League.
Liquid’s Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski, on the other hand, isn’t confident that the CS:GO calendar will be better next year.
“The CS schedule is completely terrible and it seems like there’s no fix in sight,” EliGE told Dust2.us.
It’d be better for the teams, players, casters, and analysts if tournament organizers provided their schedule for the whole year in advance. That way, everybody would be able to prepare and choose what events they want to attend or skip.
It might be time for Valve to step up and lead this discussion with all parties involved, including tournament organizers, organizations, and the Counter-Strike Professional Players Association.
