It was a true Cinderella story for Into The Breach. A team barely known outside of Tier 2, cracking top eight at the final CS:GO Major and beating FaZe, ENCE, and Fnatic along the way. They would eventually fall to a Vitality team that seems to have a date with destiny in Paris, but there’s no shame in that. They’ve proved to us all that UK esports (particularly UKCS) has a bright future ahead.
The pride of UKCS. Credit: ITBesports on Twitter
The Vitality Loss
This Into The Breach CS:GO team can hold their heads up high after losing to Vitality. They pushed the French team to its limit, in a match that most would have pegged as a wash for Vitality. Into The Breach were not going down without a fight. For a roster put together just three months ago, what they’ve achieved here is beyond impressive.
The game itself was wacky at the best of times. Newcomer CYPHER was walking onto open bombsites and obliterating all-time-great ZywOo from the server. When asked how he did it, “You just hold W and swing, don’t you?” was the answer, and a perfectly British one at that. At times, CRUC1AL seemed to be the best AWPer in the match, and Thomas was even out-calling apEX initially. Experience won the day though, as they were figured out by a Vitality team with eight CS:GO Majors between them.
UKCS Is Alive
The outlook on UKCS, and UK esports in general, has been pretty grim for a while. Besides Into The Breach CS:GO only had one more UK representative at the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023. That was mezii, the IGL for Fnatic. When you consider that Brazil and Denmark led the way with 18 players, a total of 4 UK players is grim reading.
What’s perhaps even worse is that 4 representatives is an all-time-high tally for the UK. Progress is progress, but for such a big nation, it can and should be doing better. We can put this into some more perspective using numbers. Denmark’s 18 players in Paris is more than the 11 that have ever represented the UK across 10 years of CS:GO Majors. Yet Denmark’s population is just under 6 million, to the UK’s 67 million. That ratio is insane. This Into The Breach CS:GO team were actually the first-ever majority-UK core to make it to a Major. We want to explore why, and explain why Into The Breach’s Paris performance comes with a great opportunity for the UK Counter-Strike scene.
mezii represented the UK in Paris. Credit: FNATIC on Twitter
Stepping Stone Teams
For whatever reason, many UK players have left CS:GO for Valorant. Someone like soulcas, now of Liquid’s Valorant team, could really have made a difference in the UKCS scene had he committed to the grind in CS:GO.
The issue is there’s never been a gateway team that UK players could join as a stepping stone to success. Danish players had Copenhagen Flames (prior to bankruptcy), with players like HooXi, Jabbi, and TeSeS moving on to bigger and better things. Meanwhile, Complexity has typically been a great place for international players to show their skill, with the likes of jks, blameF, and k0nfig all progressing from the NA team.
Copenhagen Flames’ talent factory can be an inspiration for UKCS. Credit: PGL
The UK has Endpoint, sure, but their best players in the past have never gone on to form a UK superteam to propel the scene. That could all change now with the success of Into The Breach. At all future CS:GO tournaments, they’ll be the ones to watch if they can qualify. Even if they lose some of their Paris Major heroes, they have an opportunity here to become a talent factory for UK Counter-Strike. It would be a shame to see the team not capitalize while in such a good moment, especially with CS2 just around the corner.
The success of this Into The Breach CS:GO team also raises more concerns about the Partner system for tournament invites. It’s likely that Into The Breach will miss out on more tournaments in the future due to not being a Partner team of different tournament organizers. But if they’re ready to beat the big names, why not let them? It’s one of the main barriers to UKCS growth, and it should be removed to let the best play the best – not just the same big names over and over again.
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