ESL Odense MVP Ropz explains how \u201ccrazy\u201d win changes mousesports\u2019 year ESLNewly-crowned ESL Pro League Season 10 champions mousesports have rewritten their entire 2019 narrative, tournament MVP Robin \u2018ropz\u2019 Kool said, after their underdog run in Odense ended with a 3-0 victory over Fnatic. With dominant teams like Astralis, Team Liquid, and Evil Geniuses all in the playoff bracket, there weren\u2019t many tipping mousesports to emerge victorious, especially after falling to Liquid 2-1 in the upper bracket\u2019s second round. Sparked by a triumphant three-map series victory over Evil Geniuses, including a brutal 16-0 win over their North American opponents, mousesports battled through two more of the biggest names in the scene, Astralis, and Fnatic. While the 2-1 victory over the Danish superstars, which was marred by crowd participation which nearly led Astralis to a win, was a tight upset, mousesports put a bow on their Odense success at Jyske Bank Arena with a rapid-fire 3-0. Congratulations to @mousesports, your #ESLProLeague Season 10 Champions \ud83c\udfc6 pic.twitter.com\/9EVnEmWDjc \u2014 ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) December 8, 2019 It was a year-defining victory in front of the Danish crowd, ropz told HLTV after being crowned MVP of the ESL tournament, and one that was built on the back of a series of reflections within the team after IEM Sydney right at the start of the year. \u201cWe started off [the year] pretty well, we reached our first couple of playoff matches really early in Sydney, and that\u2019s the level that we kept,\u201d ropz explained. \u201cWhen the Major came around we really wanted to get top eight, and I think that\u2019s where we kind of started to become shaky. We weren\u2019t so good as a unit, and a team.\u201d Ropz admitted that a poor run at the Major, where mousesports missed the New Challengers stage and finished 9th-11th after back-to-back 0-2 losses to Vitality and Liquid, gave the European squad a very necessary shock to the system. The Odense MVP revealed that while mousesports were \u201cstill happy\u201d they had made the top ranks in Berlin at all because of their \u201ccrazy\u201d qualification road, a look at the team was still in order. That came in the form of a post-major bootcamp. There, the team reflected on their strengths in Sydney, their top-eight finish in Cologne, and the Berlin struggles. Karrigan laid out a plan for the team, ropz revealed: to make top-five before the end of the year, and prove they were a championship team. Read more: Thorin\u2019s Take: No Company for Young Men – \u201cWe were working with a psychologist and we were trying to figure out our goals, and everyone came to the conclusion that our common goal was to become a top-five team and win a big event,\u201d ropz explained. \u201cOur whole goal for the year was to become a top-five team and I think at this moment we might have achieved it. I hope we have, and for 2020 I think we\u2019re going to be challenging for top one, hopefully, because that\u2019s obviously the next step.\u201d According to ropz, whose last premier event win came with the team at ESL One New York in 2018, winning a \u201cbig event\u201d has turned the whole calendar year into a success, as the team built on their lessons to finally claim silverware. \u201cFor the whole year, this was our goal, and we did that now\u2026 even after the Major, this specific event, the Pro League finals, was what we set as the highest priority [as a chance to claim a trophy],\u201d he said. \u201cWe wanted to do the best here, and I\u2019m so glad we did. I think it takes some pressure off our shoulders to perform well. Everyone has been expecting us to play well, and I think now that we have done it, we can take that pressure off.\u201d As well as the weight of pressure being lifted off their shoulders, mousesports walk away from Odense with a hefty prize of $250,000 for finished first place, and a confirmed place at Valve\u2019s next major, IEM Katowice 2020. Behind them, Fnatic collected $80,000 for second, while Astralis and Natus Vincere were each paid out $40,000 for their top-four placements. Mousesports next take to the stage at cs_summit 5 from Thursday, December 12. The team will also contest EPICENTER 2019 in Moscow before Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESL Odense MVP Ropz explains how \u201ccrazy\u201d win changes mousesports\u2019 year ESLNewly-crowned ESL Pro League Season 10 champions mousesports have rewritten their entire 2019 narrative, tournament MVP Robin \u2018ropz\u2019 Kool said, after their underdog run in Odense ended with a 3-0 victory over Fnatic. With dominant teams like Astralis, Team Liquid, and Evil Geniuses all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}