While the opening season of 2024 may have been incredibly competitive in Counter-Strike, the flipside of that was that many teams struggled for positive results too.

Astralis, Falcons, and Liquid all missed out on Majors they were expected to star at, while other titans like Vitality failed to add to their trophy collection.

With that in mind, we asked talent who they thought would be the next in line to face hardships in the second half of 2024.

Talent predictions

Freddie “GrimyRannarr” Pritchard - @GrimyRannarr

NAVI: Once again I think this is the team most people would first think of. They won the major, you can never take that away from them. But there is no way that they will continue on that form and maintain their top 5 HLTV ranking. They simply cannot rely on JL life games every time.

Jack “Jacky” Peters - @Jackyesports

I think Astralis will struggle into the second half of 2024, They seem to have all the right pieces to be the most exciting Astralis in some time, yet the limitations of Devices IGL swap seems to be that he’ll either call an incredible game or deliver a stand out AWP’ing performance yet both don’t seem possible at the same time. That and crumbling deep into tournaments makes me fear for them this season. 

Neo “Ne0kai” Caine - @Ne0kai

I think for struggling however I can give you a million haha. The first name that comes to mind is Liquid, I'm really not fully sold on Ultimate just yet and think that move could be another Rainwaker in the making. 

G2 signing Snax I think is such a short term mindset but long term I really don't see that move working, and the fact that malbsMd himself said he will be anchoring rather than huNter- or Snax is hard to see and will hold them back in my opinion. 

Heroic is another that I could throw out that most definitely have the potential to fall off. I feel they have to really find a way to integrate degster and his immense talent without breaking down the team's structure too much.

Finally and probably the most important one in my opinion is Falcons. I really do not rate that team in its current state. dupreeh is still immense but shouldn't be the star rifler of the team, Maden is apparently playing some hero roles which is BAFFLING to me, Snappi's calling has been questionable at best as I saw recently at Challenger Jonkoping. I'm not sure what but i personally think there needs to be a change before that team is successful

Brandon “BDog” Rawlins - @BDogCS

I think the obvious one would be Liquid. The rumoured blast changes are interesting but you don’t know how long term that is going to be. It feels like there is a lot of work that still needs to be done that will unfold over the next 6-12 months where you’ll see them do well and make playoffs at one event and you’ll get excited but it’s about consistency and I can’t see them having that. 

Travis “Trav” Landaw Mott - @TravCS

Going for a gamble: FaZe. I think they will make the odd playoffs at big events but no more. ropz is not hitting his old form and his role seems figured out by everyone they play — there’s just some va-va-voom missing at the moment. I also think neither ENCE or HEROIC will improve.

Oleksandr “petr1k” Petryk - @petr1k_tv

VP: Ignoring the fact that I just hate all Russians there are also objective reasons. They have a person in the team who is trying to impose a new philosophy of the game on them, and the process of switching from Jame's philosophy to electroNic's philosophy will not go smoothly and without affecting the results, so I think they will shit themselves in several important championships because of this and at the end of the year they will kick either Jame or electroNic. More likely electroNic, by the way.