Yesterday, the Ukrainian National Team lineup for the upcoming IESF World Esports Championship 2023 was announced. All the players of the Ukrainian organization IKLA were included in the roster.
How did the events go?
Now I understand why the Ukrainian Counter-Strike is not developing so quickly. To be honest, many players in Ukraine could be on the national team, but IKLA is not one of them. Therefore, buying and selling a slot is absolute madness for me. It cannot be described in any other way.
You can read more about this situation here.
Next, the editors of the bo3.gg site immediately presented their unique and, in our opinion, the ideal roster of the National Team of Ukraine. Where did such players as:
And after all this, the well-known Ukrainian analyst Oleksandr petr1k Petryk entered the discussion, and briefly and factually wrote in his Telegram channel why there is no better team than IKLA:
I wanted to comment on Vova's butthurt, related to the fact that IKLA represents Ukraine at the IESF World Championship.
I agree that from the point of view of the game, IKLA is not the strongest team in Ukraine.
But it has an advantage - it will be possible to send it realistically and accurately to Romania for the finals, which you can't do with Monte and B8 players because they got on the list of the Ministry of Sports as "violators." B8 has not returned to Ukraine at all?
Therefore, in my opinion, the federation is an absolutely logical and correct solution. There are no better options. Others either play with Russians/Belarusians, did not return from abroad in time, or are inferior to the current IKLA regarding the level of play.
Let's analyze everything in detail
We remind you that earlier, six Ukrainian professional CS:GO players were included in the list of the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, consisting of athletes who have yet to return from abroad. Among them are participants of the major and RMR from teams B8 and Monte. E-sports figures in Ukraine are already predicting possible difficulties with going to LAN tournaments for these players in the future.
In total, the list included the following Ukrainian athletes:
- sdy (Monte)
- DemQQ (Monte)
- Woro2k (Monte)
- OWNER (B8)
- Amsterdam (B8)
- cptkurtka023 (B8)
After that, the Monte team was told that they were supposed to return home after the end of RMR, but since they qualified for the last CS:GO major - BLAST.tv Major Paris 2023, the team had to stay abroad for the duration of the major.
But after the end of the tournament, all the Ukrainians from Monte returned home. They confirmed this through their personal Telegram channels.
On the other hand, the B8 team did not make any announcements.
Yes, Monte players may have problems with exit, but the government of Ukraine has yet to announce possible punishments for players who do not return on time.
In the worst-case scenario of the future, the only team that will represent Ukraine at esports tournaments is NAVI since their players were abroad before the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. On the other hand, Monte, B8, or IKLA teams may be destined to compete only online or in small LAN tournaments of the tier-2 level, where there are no Russian and Belarusian players.
Why would our team not be able to play in the tournament?
First, most of our "ideal" team did not express their desire to perform at this tournament. Maybe because of their motivation, maybe because of the team's vacation, or they just weren't even asked.
This is what petr1k says putting together some kind of mix will be worse than an actively performing team.
The option of gathering a mix of individual players who deserve to represent Ukraine by their behavior and level of play is also an option, but it will be a weaker team than IKLA.
Therefore, we wish IKLA good luck at the championship! Their composition now looks as follows:
Let us remind you that the Ukrainian team has already entered Group A in the qualifying stage, where the teams of Israel, Estonia, and Armenia became their opponents. The total number of participating teams in the qualification is 16. Still, only the four best teams will be able to continue their journey and participate in the WEC23 world championship, scheduled from August 25 to September 3 in Romania. The prize fund of the tournament will amount to $ 100,000.
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