The biggest stories and plays from day one of the BLAST.tv Paris Major Legends Stage

14-5-2023 00:45

It was a day full of shocking results in Paris.

Two favorites, two surprises a win away from playoffs

"We play better versus the better teams" Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella said after Liquid made it through the Challengers Stage unconvincingly, recovering from 0-2 to 3-2 and advancing to Legends without a single win over a European team. Unlike with his previous interview, he didn't jinx his team this time.

Liquid started this stage hot, dealing with 9INE on Overpass convincingly before Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis's 2.00-rated masterclass on Inferno dismantled Natus Vincere, seeing the North Americans go into the 2-0 pool. Matching their score was another team we didn't expect to see go flawless after the first day, Monte. The Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev-led team first upset FURIA and then edged out fnatic to find themselves in reach of playoffs.

France's only hope are a win away from the Accor Arena

The other two names in the 2-0 pool won't surprise you too much. Vitality is one of them, securing two hard-fought wins over G2 (on Nuke) and ENCE (on Vertigo), with Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut pushing his teams toward the playoffs on home soil. The other is HEROIC, who have consistently made it to playoffs of big events and are looking to do the same in Paris after beating FaZe and Apeks, the latter putting up more of a fight.

Monte, Heroic, Vitality move into 2-0 pool

No one saw these 0-2 matchups coming

On the flipside, the elimination games on the second day of Legends Stage action will feature the following four teams: FaZe, G2, 9INE, and FURIA. This quartet was placed in the top 10 of our writer's power ranking before the tournament started. How did we get here?

It all started with somewhat unreasonable seeding, which matched up FaZe and G2 against HEROIC and Vitality, respectively. After their initial losses, bouncebacks were expected from the big dogs, but instead, they dropped the ball. G2 had a 10-5 lead against Bad News Eagles on Ancient, but fell apart after Sener "⁠SENER1⁠" Mahmuti clutched a 1v3 in the pistol, seeing the game slip out of the favorites' grasp in a chaotic affair.

FaZe were stumped after Into the Breach sent them to the elimination zone

FaZe, on the other hand, never looked in control versus Into the Breach, trailing from the start as Joey "⁠CRUC1AL⁠" Steusel and Cai "⁠CYPHER⁠" Watson powered the British team to victory. Joining the 0-2 pool are 9INE, who failed to deliver on their promise and pre-event hype, falling to Liquid and GamerLegion, while FURIA face elimination after an abysmal opening day on which they managed to go 0-17 on the offensive sides against Monte and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

FaZe collapse against Into the Breach; fall into 0-2 pool

FURIA in Paris: Zero T-side rounds after two maps

BNE mount T-side comeback to upset G2 in Paris

Standings after day one

Group Legends Stage

2W - 0L

HEROIC

Liquid

Monte

1W - 1L

0W - 2L

Day two matchups

2-0 pool

Date	Matches
BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023
14/05/2023	HEROIC 13:55 Liquid	Match
14/05/2023	Monte 14:00 Vitality	Match

1-1 pool

Date	Matches
BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023
14/05/2023	Natus Vincere 11:30 Ninjas in Pyjamas	Match
14/05/2023	fnatic 11:30 GamerLegion	Match
14/05/2023	ENCE 12:45 Into the Breach	Match
14/05/2023	Apeks 12:55 Bad News Eagles	Match

0-2 pool

Date	Matches
BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023
14/05/2023	9INE 17:00 FaZe	Match
14/05/2023	FURIA 17:55 G2	Match

Player of the day

A few candidates stand out from the crowd for player and performance of the day. One is ZywOo, who unsurprisingly led the way in Vitality's run to the qualifying matches with a 1.47 average rating across two close matches. Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz, Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi, and Joakim "⁠jkaem⁠" Myrbostad also finished high in the stats table on the back of an impressive first day.

The performance of the opening day of the Legends Stage could only be given to one, however, and it goes to YEKINDAR for quite possibly the biggest carry performance of the Major so far.

Albeit staggering already, the match-wide 2.00 rating mark doesn't even do the Latvian's display in Liquid's dominant win over Natus Vincere justice. He hard-carried the North American side in the opening half that saw Liquid secure 14 rounds on the offense of Inferno with 10 multikills, five opening kills, and nearly 150 ADR, ruining NAVI's day time and time again in banana.

YEKINDAR bullies NAVI as Liquid move to 2-0 pool in Paris

Highlights of the day

HLTV coverage

HLTV photographers Josip "brcho" Brtan and Radosław "MAKKU" Makuch captured day one of Legends Stage action in photos, which you can find in the gallery below:

Legends Stage day 1 photo gallery

Our writers on the ground, Lucas "LucasAM" Aznar Miles, Danish "Nohte" Allana, and Harry "NER0" Richards conducted the following interviews during the day:

rigoN: "It's our third Major, we want to go to this arena"

YEKINDAR: "We always believed in ourselves, even when we started 0-2"

TeSeS: "We were one of the teams that chose to not bootcamp because of the travel schedule"

Nice

2023-05-14 00:54

bo3 from beginning or no major

2023-05-14 00:57

5 replies

bo3 from beginning or no FaZe and G2

2023-05-14 01:03

4 replies

I actually like bo1, it gives smaller teams the chance to take big names off guard. Watching the T1 teams playing the same maps the same way is kinda boring, but there comes Monte, Apex and ITB, and the competition is actually exciting

2023-05-14 02:17

3 replies

fantastic take

2023-05-14 03:34

You don't HAVE to have BO1s for there to be upsets. Look at GamerLegion's run through the Challengers stage or at FaZe losing all of their BO3s in their RMR group. Having every game be a BO3 would make the wins underdogs do get in the first two games feel less like a fluke, and they'd get more praise from people that are criticising this current system.

2023-05-14 03:57

1 reply

+1 this is exactly it

2023-05-14 10:01

My pick 'ems are cooked

2023-05-14 00:58

Into The Quarterfinals

2023-05-14 01:06

Fake narrarives

NGL pick'em look compromised.

2023-05-14 01:42

WORST ANALYSTS OF ALL MAJORS ARE HERE IN BLAST TIER 1 TEAM WINS: beautiful win for the boys,they got up and done the job just like they suppose to do. Look at this clutch from XPLAYER .Thats why hes the best.Get him to playoff right now. TIER 2 TEAM WINS: This format isnt good. BO1 arent good for tier1 teams. To finish csgo and go to playoff without a storyline of a TEIR1 PLAYER not being there to win the major , it going to rob us of these mega storylies.I dont care if people support teir 2 teams , the majority of people want to se these teir1 team and these stories.*keep showing tier1 team higlights and dont talk about the GOOD game that tier2 team just played*

2023-05-14 01:47

so true

2023-05-14 03:35

+1 it’s always “wow that format is not good” and never “wow, congrats to (underdog team) for putting up such a good fight

2023-05-14 07:44

+1 Remind me of the Joker quote from the Nolan's dark knight movie. "Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds."

2023-05-14 08:15