This month’s ranking will likely see some of the least movement out of any edition of the HLTV Global Team Ranking, due to the fact that this edition comes after the player break. We have little new information to base any changes in ranking on.

The majority of the new data that we do have comes from the ESL Pro League group stage, and being one of the most important events of the year, it vastly outweighs anything else that has taken place since we returned. We saw surprises and upsets aplenty across all four groups, and the teams discussed below are the ones who took the biggest advantage of the return of tier-one Counter-Strike.

ESL Pro League marks the return from the player break

Here’s a summary of our ranking for new readers:

Our team ranking is based on teams’ achievements over the past year (with severe decay in points throughout each month), recent form over the last two months, and performance in recent events in the last 3 months.

Each team is required to have a three-man core in order to retain their points. Due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, online results, which previously had a minimal effect, now carry more weight as they are also included in the ‘Achievements’ and ‘Recent Events’ sub-categories.

Below is the current top 30 table as of Monday, September 6, which goes more in-depth into how the points are distributed — or you can check our special page, where you will be able to find the latest, weekly version of our ranking. You can see the lineup for each team by hovering over their name in the table.

OG hit their best form yet

It has not been a straightforward time for OG ever since the roster was formed; promising signs later dashed by underperformances, roster changes, and another cycle of promising signs and underperformance has been the tale for the boys in blue. IEM Cologne was not a performance that OG will have wanted to be hanging over them going into the player break, as they managed to crash out of the play-in stage at the hands of sub-top-50 team Renegades.

It seems that since having some more practice time to bed in support rifler Nikolaj “⁠niko⁠” Kristensen and young Israeli rifler Shahar “⁠flameZ⁠” Shushan, they managed to put the disappointment of Cologne behind them, and their ESL Pro League group success was a testament to this. Aleksi “⁠Aleksib⁠” Virolainen and co. went 5-0 in their group, picking up series wins over two of the current top five teams in the world, and only dropping two maps. Perhaps most pleasing has been the form of Mateusz “⁠mantuu⁠” Wilczewski and the aforementioned flameZ, who are the top two performers for the team over the course of the group stage.

Another promising sign for OG was the mental fortitude they showed in the two series that did go all three maps. Against the largely unknown Sinners the team did not get ruffled after losing a very close first map of Nuke in double overtime, instead settling down to comfortably take the next two maps to secure the match. When faced with forZe and 0-1 down in the series, it would have been easy for OG to implode having thrown a 15-12 lead to a force buy in the second map of Inferno to give up overtime. Instead OG got down to business, taking the map in a single overtime and securing the series with a comfortable win on Overpass.

With star AWPer mantuu firing on all cylinders, the rest of the team looking balanced and Aleksib calling well, OG will be hoping to go deep in the ESL Pro League playoffs and climb a few more places by the time the next edition of the rankings comes around.

Sinners enter top 20 for the first time

It has been something of a slow rise for the Sinners squad, starting their days toiling away in their local scene before the signing of Tomáš “⁠oskar⁠” Šťastný saw a plethora of opportunities open up to them. Since that signing they have been playing virtually non-stop, grinding their way to the top of the tier-two scene the old fashioned way, with plenty of wins but also a fair share of losses.

oskar and co. have earned themselves a spot in the top 20

This team’s overall trajectory since those initial months has been a promising climb, and the month of August and their ESL Pro League campaign, their debut at a tier-one event, only served to reinforce those signs; they took their series against an admittedly underperforming world #3 G2 2-1, as well as grabbing map wins over #10 OG and #15 forZe. Even more encouraging were the performances from Adam “⁠NEOFRAG⁠” Zouhar and oskar, both of whom showed the ability to frag out against the world’s best.

Sinners‘ valiant showing at ESL Pro League bore fruit in the HLTV rankings, their performance seeing them jump six places to #19. Making it into the top 20 in the world is no mean feat for the all-Czech roster, considering that oskar has been the only player from the country to feature in a tier-one team before.

Many curious eyes will be on this team as they move forward in the next month or so, to see if they can start to consistently perform a cut above the rest of tier two at events like the V4 Future Sports Festival, and to see if they can continue to qualify for showings at tier-one through events such as TWR Eastern European Masters. If Sinners take on board the lessons from ESL Pro League and continue to perform at that level or higher, they should be able to continue the upward trend.

A brand new fnatic rises from the depths

The first half of 2021 was not kind to fnatic. Following some troubles in the back end of 2020 they swapped out Robin “⁠flusha⁠” Rönnquist for Jack “⁠Jackinho⁠” Ström Mattsson, and after a mini-honeymoon period saw them place top-two at cs_summit 7, the line-up struggled. A slow decline saw them slip outside the top 10, then the top 20, then the top 30.

We all know what happened next. British duo Alex “⁠ALEX⁠” McMeekin and William “⁠mezii⁠” Merriman, the former a highly rated in-game leader and the latter a rifler who had been impressing in the tier two scene, came into the team, as did ex-Complexity coach Jamie “⁠keita⁠” Hall. This ESL Pro League has been their first chance to claw back some places in the HLTV rankings, and they have gone about that job with determination and resilience.

fnatic have shown great promise whilst qualifying for playoffs, even in games they have lost. They kicked off their tournament by taking Natus Vincere all the way on Overpass, losing that map in a tightly contested double overtime, before keeping things competitive in a 12-16 loss on Nuke. Not to be deterred they bounced back in their following series against BIG, needing to be highly resilient to take the final map of Nuke in double overtime. They improved yet again with their third series, besting FaZe 2-0, this time needing no overtimes to get the job done.

A wobble against the inconsistent mousesports followed, but even then the boys in red needed two close maps, the second yet again featuring a fnatic overtime, to get the job done. fnatic again bounced back immediately from disappointment, confirming their playoff spot with a 2-0 over Evil Geniuses.

With veteran star Freddy “⁠KRIMZ⁠” Johansson looking like he will take a more supportive role in the team, and the performances of mezii and Ludvig “⁠Brollan⁠” Brolin particularly promising, things are looking up for a fnatic team that have been on a downward spiral for the last 12 months. Their series wins at ESL Pro League already made for a record jump in this edition of the world rankings, and a deep run in the playoffs of said event could see them rise even higher next time around.

PlatoAi. Web3 Reimagined. Data Intelligence Amplified.
Click here to access.

Source: https://www.hltv.org/news/32317/og-find-impressive-form-sinners-crack-top-20-in-august-team-ranking