The Ukrainian team Leo Team successfully competed in its first-ever LAN tournament with its revamped roster. At the Urban Riga Open Season 5, the team made it to the finals and took second place.
UA.NEWS has all the details and will bring you an exclusive report.
How the tournament went
The Urban Riga Open Season 5 competition was hosted by Riga, Latvia. The tournament lasted two days, on June 28 and 29. Eight teams competed for a $5,000 prize pool.
Leo Team’s path to the finals was nearly flawless. Right up until the decisive match, the guys didn’t drop a single map to their opponents.
They started with a confident victory over Aimhaus, defeating them by a wide margin—13–8. Then came a tense match against Coalesce. There, Leo Team pulled ahead in the very end and secured a 13–11 victory.
Next, Leo Team comfortably defeated GameHarmony with a score of 13:7. Incidentally, in an interview with UA.NEWS, Leo Team’s coach Dmytro Chumak said that GameHarmony is Leo Team’s toughest opponent.
In the semifinals, the Lions gave BERG no chance, defeating them 2–0.
In the final match, Leo Team faced the European international roster of ASTRAL. The team lost to their opponents 0–2 and took home the silver medal at the tournament.
However, despite the loss in the final, this result is more than respectable for Leo Team. A silver medal at a major tournament, earned with almost no losses on the way to the final, speaks to the team’s significant potential.
The Main Achievement
But the most valuable thing isn’t even the medal. Leo Team arrived at the tournament ranked 117th in the world. However, after winning silver at the Urban Riga Open Season 5, the Lions jumped 92 spots in the HLTV world rankings and entered the top 100 best teams on the planet.
For reference: HLTV is the leading international portal for the professional Counter-Strike 2 scene. It tracks statistics, publishes news, and compiles authoritative rankings of players and teams. Making it into its top 100 is a world-class achievement sought after by hundreds of teams around the globe.
Leo Team Roster
Leo Team competed in the tournament with a mixed, international roster. It consisted of three Ukrainian and two Polish players. The combination of players from two different nations on a single team was one of the squad’s defining features, as English is the working language within the team.
The following players participated in the tournament:
Oleksandr “kL1o” Zakharchuk
Denis “amster” Lyashenko
Vladislav “leen” Stepanov
Kacper “next1me” Parakovski
Jakub “aimy” Klechkovsky
A first LAN tournament is rarely easy, but Leo Team handled it as if this lineup had been competing on stage for years. We’re confident we’ll be hearing more about this team and its successes in the future.
