Photo Credit: HLTV
The quote, “from rags to riches and from riches to rags”, has no better real life example than the current EnVyUs team. As LDLC, the core of the EnVyUs team, had a very prestigious run with their old organization, winning DreamHack Winter 2014 over the legendary NiP. After the team’s rebranding as EnVyUs, the French went on a dominant streak, grabbing second place at ESL One: Cologne 2015 and first place at DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015. After that the first signs of turmoil in the team began to show themselves. After several poor showings at tournaments and uncharacteristic losses to weaker teams, the team decided to remove kioShiMa and bring in DEVIL. This failed to improve anything for the team and some people would argue that the team became even worse as a result. Whatever the case, EnVyUs’s star continued to fall as they dropped in the rankings. They had come from nothing to become world champions, only to tumble back down to obscurity once more.
2016 showed signs of improvements from the ex-major champions, but they continued to disappoint at tournaments. Their only placing came in February when they took down dignitas in the Global eSports Cup Season 1, which did not contain many of the top teams. Recently they looked to be on an upwards spiral as they won several of their ESL Pro League matches against similarly ranked teams, or even higher ranked teams.
Four teams were invited to the Gfinity Invitational, Epsilon eSports, GODSENT, mousesports, and EnVyUs. Although the tournament was ominously lacking in top teams, GODSENT and mousesports were two teams that were around the same ranking as EnVyUs and Epsilon had a scrappy, underdog history. EnVyUs’s first match against Epsilon was impressive as they defeated the Swedes, 3-1, with the only loss coming from a close 14-16 game. Although the finals was tightly fought, the end result was EnVyUs defeating mousesports, 3-0, and taking home $50,000. Although it might not have been the win they were looking for, EnVyUs could be on the track back to being one of the best teams in the world again.
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