So the first match of the European Nations Championship Finals was played today, an epic game between Germany and Denmark, both of which high up on the list of favourites to win the tournament from the start. I'll do a bit of a tournament recap...
Only particularly notable thing from the qualifying was that croatia managed to pass through the first and second qualifying rounds into the main group stage - their seeding will certainly be improved next year. Romania started off in qualifying round 2, advanced to the main round where they ended up top of group B, some poor seeding by the ENC officials there too I guess. The top 3 teams from each group would pass through to the finals; from group A these were Ukraine, Slovakia and Germany, and from group B Romania, Denmark and Bulgaria advance to the finals.
Bit of controversy in that Norway, Sweeden and Russia were all disqualified from the tournament for racking up excess penalty points for rules violations. According to the tournament rules teams needed to provide full profiles of each of their players, fill in a lineup and add a match statement before each game was to be played. Now that strikes me as somewhat petty things to disqualify teams over, but I suppose rules are rules and the ENC has their reasons for it. Was a shame though, because Russia and Sweeden were both in the running for advancing into the finals, both with a definite possibility of winning the whole tournament. Puts a bit of a downer on the finals really.
But anyway, whats happened has happened, and tonight saw the first of the games in the straight elimination finals round. Germany versus Denmark was always going to be a very interesting match up and with the round being a best of one match, neither team could afford to slip up. I've just watched the replay, and the game definately lived up to expectations. I wont spoil it with the result, but check out the lineups at gosugamers, and its definately worth the watch. Interesting stuff to say the least - great ganking from the off, awesome teamfights, and can a very lategame spectre carry out a game against a team containing a tanked-up axe and krobelus? You'll have to find out for yourself :P
Replay link:
http://www.gosugamers.net/dota/replays/21556
ENC finals elimination grid:
http://www.esl.eu/eu/enc/2009/dota/5on5/finals/rankings/
Next finals game to be played is slovakia against bulgaria, I think I'll back slovakia to win that one. To win the whole tournament... at the moment I think my money is on Ukraine, but Germany and Romania can definately be a threat to that.
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