The ELEAGUE Premier 2018 will be played in the “double elimination” format. This means the teams that lose in the first round will have one more chance to survive. If a team loses the second match, they will be eliminated from the tournament. Similarly, the side that will get two wins will be ranked on the basis of total kills.

ELEAGUE Premier 2018 Schedule

The eight qualifying teams are divided into two groups of four. Top two finishers advance to the playoffs. Both the first-round matches and the knockout matches will be played in BO3 format. The only exception is the grand finale, which will be played on the BO5 format.

All teams present at the ELEAGUE Premier 2018 were invited to attend. They are Astralis, Team Liquid, MIBR, and Cloud9 in Group A while in Group B we have FaZe Clan, Fnatic, Mousesports, and NatusVincere. Except for Cloud9, ranked 14th, all other teams are in the top 8 of the HLTV ranking.

The ELEAGUE #CSGOPremier 2018 Groups

Games begin July 21 at 2pm ET
Full schedule https://t.co/DQ1dqOR16b

Where to watch
https://t.co/8vq7aFjwXs
https://t.co/3wHS8OmL1q
https://t.co/S2z1KmxVLi pic.twitter.com/MTNSKZka61

— ELEAGUE (@ELEAGUETV) July 12, 2018

FaZe Clan, Astralis, and NatusVincere are big favorites to the title. The American organization of FaZe Clan, captained by Finn “karrigan” Andersen, is the current champion of ESL One Belo Horizonte. Danish team Astralis, led by Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, arrives after winning three titles in the 2018 season. The Ukrainians of Na’Vi, meanwhile, recently won the ESL One Cologne 2018.

NatusVincere vs Fnatic (ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2018, July 22, Sunday, Best of 3)

Na’Vi is on fire at the moment. The team just can’t stop winning titles this season. Apart from winning the ESL One Cologne, the team has also won the CS:GO Asia Championships 2018.

The player to shine for the team is Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. He was the MVP in all the competitions where Na’Vi were victorious this year. In the past three months, he has gotten 45% of his kills with headshots which shows how lethal he is. His weapons of choice are the AK47 and AWP. He is also one of the specialists of the infamous Deagle. He can offer so much to Na’Vi and has been a critical component to the team’s success in 2018.

Team Fnatic

Fnatic has just been struggling since 2017. The team failed to achieve a single title victory in the past year. The problems within the team have been quite evident in their competitive performances. The decisions of the veteran Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer Gustafsson have made them quite uncertain about which players to keep or let go.

The team did find some stability when olofmeister finally quit and they started the year by winning the World Electronic Sports Games and Intel Extreme Masters XII – World Championship. This got them up into the HLTV ranking and it looked like they would be a force to be reckoned with. However, Jonas “Lekr0” Olofsson and Maikil “Golden” Selim had other ideas. Both of them had a fallout with the team which led to Lekr0 going to Ninjas in Pyjamas. Meanwhile, Golden is currently on the inactive list. To replace them, the team has signed Richard “Xizt” Landström and William “draken” Sundin. With these two signings, the side has played five competitive games and won only two. Such a record is not expected from the Intel Master Champions.

Our Betting Prediction

This encounter is all set to go in favor of Na’Vi and even the history favors the team. In 2018 these sides met on four occasions and Na’Vi won 1-0, 3-0, 2-0, 2-0. So, it is highly unlikely that Fnatic will even get a single win in this best of three series.

Na’Vi 2 – 0 Fnatic