RLCS EU Fall Invitational – Good News for Liquid, BDS Falls Short

Five teams from Europe have qualified for the Fall Major in #Rotterdam after three outstanding Regionals: Fall Cup champions #KarmineCorp, Fall Open champions #OxygenEsports, #Quadrant,# MoistEsports, and Fall Invitational winners #TeamLiquid.

Team Liquid had a sluggish start and needed all five rounds to advance from the Swiss Stage, but they exploded in the Playoffs. They won crucial matches against Team Vitality and Evil Geniuses 4-1 each to secure their place in Rotterdam. Later, they defeated Karmine Corp to win their first Regional since joining the RLCS prior to RLCS X.

Liquid’s Amazing Run

Tristan “Atow” Soyez and Oskar “Oski” Gozdowski both put up exceptionally great performances for Team Liquid during the competition. They were the only two players in the competition to average above 1.5 goal contributions (goals + assists) per game. Oski also had the most goals per game average of any player (0.97), while both Oski and Atow produced shots at an absurdly high rate, ranking in the top five with 3.71 and 3.56 respectively.

The two fifteen-year-old superstars from Team Liquid (born one day apart in February 2007) made the difference in a stressful Regional where someone had to stand up for Team Liquid to advance to the Major. Team Liquid will be one of the most dreadful teams in Rotterdam since they have Major experience they can draw from.

No Luck For BDS

The 2021–22 season was dominated by Team BDS, both online and off. Together with Moist Esports, they matched for the most Regional Events victories in Europe with three. They also won the Fall Major and the World Championship. With Enzo #Seikoo Grondein, the World Championship MVP, on the team, the current lineup version appeared poised to unseat the Dignitas dynasty as the greatest Rocket League squad ever.

In a few months, Team BDS will surprisingly be watching the Fall Major from their house. They failed to even make the playoffs this time around, falling to Team Liquid in the fifth round of the Swiss Stage. They were ousted by Quadrant and Karmine Corp in the quarterfinals of the Fall Open and Fall Invitational, respectively. At their peak, Team BDS are probably still one of the finest teams in the world, but they’ll need to go back to that level if they want to contend for the championship this year.

Other notable teams that didn’t make it to Rotterdam include G1, which had a great start before losing to Karmine Corp in an exciting six-game series, and Team Vitality, which almost set a record by missing out on a Regional while still having a chance to make it to an international LAN in the same Split. Evil Geniuses, Aogiri, and Tundra Esports all failed to win after briefly dominating the first two competitions.

As teams like Moist Esports shown in the previous season, failing to qualify for the Fall Major is by no means a death sentence. They came in eighth in Europe during the Fall Split before making it to the championship rounds of the next two Majors and earning the top seed in Europe for the World Championship. In reality, Moist Esports was one of just three teams (out of only eight) to compete on Championship Sunday at the World Championship while missing out on the Fall Major, together with Version1 and Karmine Corp.

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