It’s that time of year again, when all eyes converge on a historic German city. The competitive calendar sees 16 teams return to the Cathedral of Counter-Strike for a week of action. ESL One Cologne is widely regarded as the largest non-Major event on the calendar, and this year promises to deliver.
ESL One Cologne is one of the hottest events on the CS:GO calendar, and remains a tournament with an incredible amount of prestige despite not having Major status since 2016. Having sold out the venue with 15,000 attendees for the past two years, it remains a jewel in the crown of many squads looking to attend. The tournament is also part of the second season of the Intel Grand Slam circuit, where the first team to chalk up four wins within ten events claims $1,000,000.
Sixteen teams are set to attend, eleven of which received direct invites with the remaining five teams securing a place through qualifiers. The teams that made their way to Cologne through qualifying include Team Liquid, who are currently sat atop of the CS:GO world rankings. In fact, all of the top five teams; Liquid, Astralis, ENCE, Vitality and FURIA, will be in attendance at CS:GO’s spiritual home.
ESL One Cologne will consist of two stages in ESL’s preferred format, the Group Stage and the Playoffs. The Group Stage falls into two eight-team double elimination groups, culminating in four teams going through to the Playoffs from this round. Each group will see three teams go through to the single-elimination playoffs, with the first place team heading to the Semi-finals and the second and third placing teams taking a place in the Quarter-finals.
Liquid have attended eight events in total this year, and have reached the final in all but one of them, going on to win four.
The initial match in the Group Stage is a best-of-one, while the remaining group games are in a best-of-three format. The Quarter-finals and Semi-finals are to be played in a best-of-three format, with the Grand Final taking place as a best-of-five series. The Group Stage is set to take place between 2 – 4 July, with the playoffs being held over the weekend of 5 – 7 July.
The odds below represent the outright winner for ESL One Cologne 2019. For a complete list of odds for ESL One Cologne 2019, head over to our dedicated section for ESL One Cologne 2019.
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Follow Pinnacle EsportsAfter their victory in Montpellier, their third Intel Grand Slam event in a row, Team Liquid (3.74*) come into Cologne as serious favourites for the title. Liquid’s trajectory to the top has been more meteoric than Astralis’ was a year and a half ago, even though Astralis is a team widely regarded as being the greatest in the Global Offensive era. The North Americans have attended eight events in total this year, and have reached the final in all but one of them, going on to win four.
The ESL Pro League Season 9 – Finals also saw Liquid beat Astralis for the first time since reaching the top spot, and comfortably too. With the form Liquid are in, with Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski comfortably taking up his role as the team’s star, it’ll require a team to move heaven and earth if they want to take the title away from Liquid.
This event also has the added bonus that if Liquid are victorious in Cologne, they would claim the second season of the Intel Grand Slam after the fifth stop on the circuit after just four event wins for Liquid.
Naturally, Astralis (3.56*) are a potential spoiler for the trophy. Despite being in a downward spiral as of late, it’d be remiss to not include them on this list. The Danish powerhouse are still just as industrious, and retain a strong roster of powerful players. Their performance over the past month has seen them take two disappointing 5-6th place finishes at ECS Season 7 Finals and the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals. Their most recent exit came by a 2-1 defeat to Liquid, with the series being decided on Vertigo. Nicolai ’device’ Reedtz holds a higher HLTV.org rating (1.30) than EliGE (1.25) on LAN in the past month.
Na’Vi (7.64*) are the first on this list of dark horses. Considering the fact they’ve not played a competitive match since mid-May, nobody really knows what the majority-Russian team will bring to the table since being knocked out in the second stage of the ESL Pro League. But, as always, the team have two potential attacking avenues. One goes by the name of Oleksandr ’s1mple’ Kostyliev, still arguably the best player in the world, and the other is Denis ‘electronic’ Sharipov, a young explosive rifler who’s easily able to bring the action to another level.
The Finns of ENCE (7.93*) come up next in this list as they should, being in third place in the world. ENCE were last seen in a top-level competitive match at DreamHack Dallas, with their second place finish still confirming to many that they are a potential contender and IEM Katowice wasn’t a one-off. The team still have a lot of firepower, with youngster Jere "sergej" Salo one of the more promising members of the team.
ESL One Cologne remains a tournament with an incredible amount of prestige despite not having Major status since 2016.
Vitality (8.65*) and FURIA (26.48*) rest as the final two teams on the list of teams to watch. The two ECS finalists weren’t in Montpellier, due to being in ESEA’S MDL system rather than the ESL Pro League, and used the downtime for different purposes. While Vitality spent the time away from competition after lifting the ECS trophy, FURIA were upset at the MOCHE XL tournament by falling to European roster GamerLegion, headed up by Kévin ‘Ex6TenZ’ Droolans. Both teams should be set for playoff appearances in Cologne.
Despite the amount of teams with serious potential, there are still other teams at the competition. These ones aren’t necessarily going to have as much impact as they’d hope. Renegades (51.94*) are struggling to show the promise they started to display in 2018, MIBR (17.32*) continues to be uncertain of their place in CS:GO, but their recent addition of Lucas ‘LUCAS1’ Teles could be the impetus the team needs to go past a Group stage for the first time since Sydney.
ESL One Cologne 2019 is set to take place in the German city between 2 – 7 July, where 16 teams will be competing for the lion’s share of $300,000. The pool of teams is so stacked, with just one of the top ten not in attendance that it’s set to be a key moment on the calendar. It can all be caught on ESL’s Twitch channel.
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