After finishing second at DraculaN and in two online events, Monte finally broke their Grand Finals curse by winning the DreamHack Knockout LAN in Stockholm. With this win, they not only jump up in the VRS ranking, but also secure a spot in Stage one of ESL Pro League Season 23 early next year.
It has been a busy four months for Monte since the arrival of a second Brit on the team, Oscar “AZUWU” Bell. Right out the gates, the squad travelled to DraculaN Season 1, where they placed second, losing to fnatic. In Romania, Monte showed the level this new roster could compete at as they beat the likes of Passion UA, Gentle Mates, and ENCE.
In the next couple of months, this Jack “Gizmy” von Spreckelsen-led side would make it to the Grand Finals of NODWIN Clutch Series 2 and ESL Challenger League Season 50 Europe Cup 4.
In Stockholm, Monte would cruise through their group on day one, beating both AimClub and ASTRAL 2-0 to the knockout and HLTV stage.
Kicking off the RO16, Monte would play up against 500, featuring familiar faces Sebastian “volt” Maloș and Cai “CYPHER” Watson. This ended up being a rather easy affair as Lithuanian duo Gytis “ryu” Glušauskas and Aurimas “Bymas” Pipiras shone.
Gizmy and Monte playing at DraculaN Season 1
Rounding off the day, Monte beat French side GenOne 2-0 after a lengthy double overtime brawl on map one and a 13-1 on map two to secure a semi-finals birth.
Here, they faced their opposition in the tournament to date, OG. Recently adding Timur “FL4MUS” Marev and Casper “cadiaN” Møller, OG looked like the favourites to win the event. This did not faze Monte as they beat them 2-1 to secure their second LAN finals appearance.
The only thing that stood between them and the trophy was the recently crowned DraculaN 3 champions, FUT. Once again, Bymas rose to the occasion and even posted a 2KD on the final map as Monte won 2-1.
This is, crazily enough, the first time Gizmy has won a LAN after placing second at two EPIC.LANs and at Insomnia 69. For AZUWU, this marks his third LAN win and second international LAN after he won Intel Monsters Reloaded 2023 in Turkey.
Owen “smooya” Butterfield was also in attendance with Sashi. They successfully made it out of the group stage and beat GUN5 in the RO16 with the British AWPer posting an impressive 1.81 HLTV rating. Unfortunately, he would go on to fall in the quarter-finals 1-2 to Inner Circle, but didn’t go down without a fight as he dropped a 1.23 HLTV rating.
Monte not only won 68 VRS points and climbed to 46th in the world, but also secured a spot in ESL Pro League Season 23. Unfortunately for them, and something the team did not know at the time, ESL had just announced that only the ESL Pro League Season 23 playoffs would be on LAN. Monte can still very well make it to the LAN portion, but they have to make it through Stages one and two.
The teams already qualified for Stage one of ESL Pro League Season 23 are PARIVISION, M80, Lynn Vision, NRG, Gaimin Gladiators, and SemperFi. These seven teams will be joined by nine more from the Global VRS Ranking.
