Welcome back to another exciting day of CS:GO news! Today we’ll be taking a look at Vitality’s controversial match against Furia, FNX’s return to the pro, and Cloud9’s historic rise in the HLTV rankings. As always we’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s dive on in.

Vitality Trolling?

Our top story today is the controversial match between Team Vitality and Furia in the ESEA Season 31 Global Challenge semifinals that happened Sunday afternoon.

Vitality had already qualified for the promotion spot in ESL Pro League Season 10 on July 12th and had vocally discussed their desire to forfeit the ESEA match to allow their players time to rest ahead of IEM Chicago.

Unfortunately, ESL rules prevented the team from forfeiting the match or risk losing their spot in the Pro League. As a result, the team decided to have a bit of fun in their match with some pretty outlandish plays. Of particular note was their multiple kills with the Zeus Taser across the first map, and a round of nothing but five deagles there as well.

The big controversy came really in their laissez-faire attitude towards the match and how it ruined the spirit of the competition. Many fans felt that even if Vitality was already qualified for Pro League that they should’ve put their all into this match.

While generally, we’d agree that a team should always put their best foot forward in any competition, you have to look at the broad picture here to understand why they did it. It’s a bit ridiculous that the ESEA format allows a team to qualify to the top flight and still have to play in their tier-two playoffs, especially for such a small amount (comparative to tier-one tournaments) of money at only $15 thousand.

Furthermore, the team only had about four days to prepare for and fly to Chicago for IEM, an event they actually have a good shot at winning. There’s a good chance they can win the event and it’s $125 thousand first-place prize, so why go in tired and unprepared for a smaller event? And with two seasons already spent down there, they’re probably tired of all these minor matches. The team’s earned its spot in the big leagues might as well let them have some fun with their last small-time match.

Cloud9 Becomes Cirrocumulus

Speaking of rising out of being small-time, Cloud9 shot up the HLTV rankings this week after a surprisingly good showing from the new roster.

While the team only managed a single win at the event, it came shockingly against world number six FaZe Clan in a 16-12 showing on Mirage. The team also managed ties against NRG and MIBR, ranked fifth and fifteenth respectively, and even managed to almost take the world number one Team Liquid to OT on Inferno in the semis. The team showed they’re monsters on T-Side at the tournament, though they could use some work on their CT.

Their results did seem to impress the HLTV algorithm, as the team shot up a record-setting 281 spots on the leaderboard to end up in 20th on the global standings. We’ll still need to wait on how this team gels as time goes on, but the future looks bright so far for C9.

Other News

In other rankings news, Virtus.Pro, the famed Polish team that once was a powerhouse in CS:GO, has finally gotten back into the top 30 after winning a small Polish league. It’s only a small step so far, but you have to be able to walk an inch before you can run a mile. We’ll be keeping a close eye on them over the next few months to see how things develop for them.

Elsewhere, we got the confirmation from FNX that he will be returning to the scene sometime in the next few weeks or months. A star of the Brazilian scene, he may be taking the role Coldzera is leaving on MIBR, and would surely be a huge boost to the currently struggling team.

Flusha also announced his return to the scene after his half-year break. He’s been struggling since leaving Fnatic for C9, but perhaps this this break will finally see him return to his championship-winning form.

That’s all the news we have for today, thanks for sticking with us and we’ll see you tomorrow for more exciting CS:GO news.