There are less than 24 hours left before six teams enter the legendary Spodek Arena and begin the fight for the IEM Katowice 2024 trophy, a trophy that carries with it enormous prestige, valuable prize money and opens the door to some of the biggest tournaments of the year. Relog Media, in cooperation with Mozart Beta, enabled direct transmission and reporting from the scene, and a little while ago, a video announcement of the spectacle that awaits us in the coming days was released.
The battle for the top six was as merciless as could be expected, and by far the biggest surprise is that we won't see the world's top-ranked team and the most dominant team from 2023, Team Vitality, in the title fight. This information only confirms how difficult it was to reach the playoffs, and Vitality not only did not reach the playoffs, but they left the tournament without a single win.
Besides them, the biggest surprise is the failure of the third team in the world, Natus Vincere, who at the start of the tournament were victims of an unstoppable force called Team Spirit, and then lost to the Falcons in the decisive match to advance further. One of the main candidates for passing was Cloud9, who, like Vitality, failed at the start, losing both matches they played.
But back to the winners. Teams that have overcome all challenges and are now only two or three wins away from what everyone dreams of. Among them is the current champion and favorite of the local audience, G2 Esports, the legendary FaZe Clan, which has been the best team along with Vitality since the release of CS2, as well as Team Spirit - the team that everyone probably fears the most right now.
Whether it's one of the mentioned favorites, or one of the teams that assume the role of outsiders, they all have their hopes and dreams that they will try to achieve by winning the Katowice trophy.
ENCE is the first Polish team to reach the finals after eight years and will have huge support from the home crowd. They were already defeated once in the tournament by MOUZ, who proved that even when they are without their best player, they are able to make perfect changes that will quickly bring them back to the top.
The formation of the new Falcons team was followed by a storm of indignation and scandal due to the amount of money they were rumored to be investing, and in the end, although we may not have gotten the super team that was talked about, it turned out that they formed an extremely stable team that is the basis of the former ENCE five and the results were not lacking as expected, now it's just a question of how far they can go.
