IEM Cologne 2022 Playoffs – Friday, July 15

With only six teams left in the IEM Cologne 2022 event, we head into the playoffs with two cracking quarter-finals to kick off the weekend. Here at eSportBet.com our resident CS:GO tipster has provided his best bets for Friday’s matches.

MOUZ started IEM Cologne as the 18th ranked team in the world and they had to qualify through the Play-In tournament. Since making the IEM main event and then making it to the playoffs, their world ranking has already risen to 14th in the world. On their way to this quarter-final against Astralis, MOUZ have only lost to the IEM Cologne favourites NaVi in the opening round where they lost 0-2.

However, since dropping into the lower-bracket MOUZ have beaten Heroic 2-0, Vitality 2-1 and Ninjas In Pyjamas 2-1, with all of those teams being ranked higher in the world rankings. It is fair to say that MOUZ has been the real surprise packet in the 2022 edition of IEM Cologne so far, with their opponent for this match in Astralis being another surprise participant in the playoffs.

Astralis entered IEM Cologne 2022 as the most intriguing and most talked about roster in the current CS:GO landscape. The 12th ranked team in the world have been showing some really good signs of improvement over their last few events and they have definitely shown so far in this event, that this roster is back to competing with the best teams in the world once again.

Astralis flew through the Play-In tournament with wins over Complexity and BIG 2-0 and 2-1, they then went on to beat FURIA and Cloud9, more surprisingly, 2-0 in both series over teams who are higher in the rankings. Astralis did lose their last match 0-2 to FaZe Clan but even those two maps were very close, with FaZe being the number one team in the world for a reason.

The betting odds for this match will be very tight up until they kick off and that is the way we see it here at eSportBet.com, as we believe that this match will be going the distance to three maps.

Movistar Riders had to go through the Play-In tournament to qualify for the main event, but they breezed through with a 16-13 win over MiBR and a 2-0 win over Vitality. They then went on and made it all the way to the upper-bracket final in Group A after winning both of their opening two matches over G2 and Vitality 2-0 and 2-1, respectively. The 13th ranked team in the world then went on to lose 1-2 to NaVi in the upper-bracket final to record their first loss of IEM Cologne 2022.

This all-Spanish roster has shown they are in really good form at their most recent events, with two great results coming from their ESL Challenger League where they secured a 3rd-place finish and they were able to get the win at ESL Challenger Valencia 2022.

Another one of the more surprising teams to make the playoffs for IEM Cologne 2022, would have to be Team Liquid. Team Liquid started the IEM Cologne as the 17th ranked team in the world and they were also entering the event with a stand-in player, Mareks ‘YEKINDAR’ Galinskis standing in for the benched Richard ‘shox’ Papillon. However, you wouldn’t have noticed that ‘YEKINDAR’ was only a stand-in, because he has been the best player on this Team Liquid roster for all of their IEM Cologne matches.

If this Team Liquid roster can continue on their three-game win streak and continue to help out ‘YEKINDAR’, there is absolutely no reason that they cannot take out this series and set up a juicy semi-final with FaZe Clan.

With all of that being said, we are going to be siding with the underdogs at the money line with the online bookmakers. Team Liquid coming into this series on a three-game win streak and they have been playing some great Counter Strike and we believe they should be too strong for Movistar Riders.


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