10. Team9 over eoL – (13-11) (17-20 in 2OT) (13-7) – Clikarena – April 20th-21st, 2003

“Battle without SK”

HLTV Demo (de_cbble)
HLTV Demo (de_train)
HLTV Demo (de_dust2)

Team9 Roster

vesslan
Lucchese
quick
Luciano
Luke

eoL Roster

XeqtR
Element
Naikon
DarK
Knoxville

Considering how many issues the tournament went though and the ones that followed, it’s a miracle that the championship is even in the running or the top ten. But when a championship match between two of the top teams in Europe goes into two overtimes, people must take notice.

Team9.esu’s kryptonite during the entire 2003 year had been the roster of SK.swe. Conveniently, the hype around one of the hottest new team on the scene from Norway, GoL.eoL, was their ability to beat SK.swe. At the time SK.swe was nearly invincible having won every tournament they entered from CPL Winter 2002 through CPL Cannes 2003, including numerous medium size events such as SEL Season 2. On top of that SK.swe would go on to win the next two CPL’s, Summer and Winter.

SK.swe was expected to roll through this event. It wasn’t to be as GoL.eoL defeated them in overtime for the upper bracket semifinals 16-12 on Train. Having avoided SK.swe because of that upset, Team9 set its sights on a possible tournament victory. Standing in their way was GoL.eoL. The opening match between the two came in the upper bracket finals on a very defensive Cbble. Team9 eked out a win 13-11 sending GoL.eoL into the lower bracket to face a familiar foe, SK.swe.

Dispatching SK.swe in another amazing match 13-10, GoL.eoL advanced to the finals believing firmly they could win two matches against Team9. Why not? They had just beat the best team in the World twice.

The interesting thing about this match was the battle of strategies between Joergen "XeqtR" Johannessen against Johan “Vesslan” Ryman. Both were near the top of their game and came in fully prepared for the tournament. Still, the outcome was decided by individual performances.

After forcing a tie in regular play, the action got crazy in overtime. The opening pistol round went to Team9 on the offensive after an impressive fake of the outer bomb site and then a plant in the inner bomb site. The fake allowed Team9 to hold off for the win and collect the next save round; remember in the past overtime was done like a regular match with a start money of $800. A huge 2v1 victory with barely enough money to buy weapons by Lars "Naikon" Olaisen allowed GoL.eoL to salvage a round.

Team9 looked like they would be the champions after winning the pistol round and fragging the bomb planter in the following round as he rushed into the inner bomb site. That dead bomb nearly cost GoL.eoL but they clutched it up winning the next full-buy deagle round to force a second overtime. The second overtime saw good adaption to the opponents by Johannessen and GoL.eoL.

Pushing on defense, GoL.eoL caught Team9 off guard taking rounds in both the upper and lower bomb site before Team9 reacted to pull off a perfect split bomb site rush in the final round. The half ended 2-1 in favor of GoL.eoL. The second half was all GoL.eoL who won on a nice alley rush and converted the defensive save the following round.

After winning the first map, GoL.eoL went to a second map, Dust2, hoping they could pull off a victory. Amazing play by Miguel “quick” Bonett in bomb site B on the defensive side really decided the map single handily. GoL.eoL didn’t win a single round in bomb site B in their entire offensive half costing them a 5-7 first half score.

From that point it was just a matter of time as some good hard catwalk rushes early put Team9 up 11-5. Victory came at 13-7 after a little bit of a comeback from GoL.eoL. Both teams played amazingly rewarding the fans who stuck around even after top team SK.swe had been eliminated.

The terrible part is even with the great showing both of these teams put on, neither has yet to receive any prize money from the event. Life’s full of strange and difficult ironies.