The Spaniards from Movistar Riders surprise at the EPL – they beat the Russian team Gambit in CS:GO

Many gamers follow esports, follow professional players and cheer for the teams they like the most. In this sense, esports is not much different from other sports. The fifteenth season of the ESL Pro League CS: GO competitions never ceases to amaze us, especially the performance of the Movistar Riders team from Spain.

The backbone of the Movistar Riders team was updated in August 2021, and six months after the reshuffle, the players were able to surprise and convince the fans bet on esports. According to the results of the first two gaming days at the EPL, the Moviestar Raiders are on an equal footing with Team Liquid – two wins without a loss. Let’s figure out how it happened.

This is not to say that Movistar’s victories were incredibly easy. The team fought selflessly in both matches, and in the end turned out to be a little stronger than their rivals. The first opponents of the Spaniards were the Brazilians from GODSENT. The warm-up map turned out to be easy: the Spaniards easily took Nuke with a score of 16:6, but already on Ancient, the Brazilians fought and took the map – 16:11. At the decisive Mirage level, the struggle was tight, but in the second half of the map, the Spaniards simply put the squeeze on the Godsents – 16:12 – and earned their first victory in group C.

The match against the Players team, which is played by esportsmen from Gambit (top 3 in the HLTV rating!), turned out to be much more interesting. In fact, the very first map was the sweatiest one: on Inferno, the Spaniards almost let go of the game in overtime, but in the end they coped with the Gambits with a minimal advantage — 16:14. Players equalized the score of the series by taking the usual Mirage (16:7), but on Ancient the team from the top HLTV lost to the team from the second ten — 16:9.

In general, the path of Movistar Riders in the HLTV rating is quite interesting. If back in 2019 this team was in the region of thirtieth place, then already at the beginning of 2021, the place in the ranking not only fell, but crashed loudly – to 106. Only after the August reshuffle, the team showed hope for a comeback, and in October it pulled out in the top 15, but then began to slowly slide down.

Prior to the start of the ESL Pro League, the Movistar Riders team lived in the area of ​​34th place in the rating, but during the tournament it moved up more than 10 lines to 23rd place. And judging by the latest results, this is clearly not the limit.

The e-sportsmen will have to play against the main favorite of the group – Team Liquid, after which they will need to defeat strong BIG and not lose points against outsiders from the USA – Party Astronauts. If the team completes at least half of these tasks, then it has a very real chance of reaching the playoffs.

For the Spanish club, this will be the first success in many years, and if the players manage the excitement at the decisive stage, they can set a new bar for their esports organization. As you can see, esports is very interesting, because in terms of intensity of passions and unpredictability, it is not inferior to any other sports.