ESL Pro League Season 21 Preview — The Top 8 Storylines

ESL Pro League Season 21 kicks off in early May, and eight roster storylines will define how the bracket actually plays out.

Storyline one: the karrigan situation casts a long shadow. Whether or not the Falcons deal lands before the event, every team in his current orbit is playing for leverage at the same time as they are playing for points. That is rarely a recipe for clean Swiss runs.

Storyline two: NAVI’s post-roster-shuffle group looks coherent for the first time in 18 months. If they make a deep playoff run, the conversation about CS2 superteams immediately changes. Storyline three: the FaZe-Vitality rivalry has the kind of momentum that actually moves the VRS rankings.

Storylines four through eight in brief: G2’s Snax era, Heroic’s North-American experiment, Liquid’s rebuild without their veteran AWPer, MOUZ’s coaching change, and Astralis’s slow-burn return to relevance. Pro League Season 21 is the densest set of plot threads CS has had in two years.