Throughout the history of Counter Strike Global Offensive, the North American region has been looked down upon as an inferior region in comparison to their European counterparts. This perception of North American Counter Strike has spread throughout the community based on clear cut facts. North American CS has historically been inferior to its counterparts largely due to its inability to produce results at the highest level of international play.

Even up and coming regions like Brazil have managed to quickly rise up and surpass North America. In years past, North American team’s would generate little to no results on the international stage. Things have slowly begun to change in the early parts of 2016, as slowly but surely, the overall strength of the scene in North America increased. Finally, North America has found itself in a position where multiple teams can contend at the international level.

Eyes Towards the Future

North America now finds itself in a period where it must work towards improving on its already impressive results in 2016. Just recently, North America has undergone one of its world famous shuffles, and unlike past shuffles, it seems that this time around the teams at the top of the pack have actually come out of the eye of the storm looking stronger.

In the case of Cloud 9, the addition of Autimatic has allowed Cloud 9 and its star studded roster to flourish, currently sitting at an extremely impressive 14/0 in ESL Pro League. For Team Liquid, the case is slightly different; they lost their superstar player in the form of S1mple, but still retained the core of the roster that made the run to the finals of ESL Cologne 2016.

The top teams are not the only ones in good positions to challenge at the international level. Teams like Optic are also making moves to bolster their rosters in attempts to make headway at the international level. North America now finds itself in a state that it has never experienced before. There now exist multiple teams in North America that have expectations upon them to perform at the international level.

Developing the Future Stars of NA

Attempting to put up results on the international stage is not the only task that lies ahead of North America in the remainder of 2016. Another important duty that will need to be fulfilled is advancing the future stars of North America amongst their development curve.

The key to any successful region is a large talent pool that can be drawn upon if any of the players fail to perform to the level that is expected for a top professional in their region. A critique of North America in the past has been that the talent pool in and of itself was so small that it prevented North America from competing versus their European counterparts in terms of firepower.

Now, however, the story is different -- over the past two years, new blood has risen up and refurbished the top teams in North America. Now, the period arrives where North America must begin to prepare its new generation of players. The next three months will be crucial to the development of players like Brehze, Sick, Twistzz, amongst others. These players will ultimately come to be the ones that refurbish the top North American teams in the future; as such, it is extremely crucial that the development go on without a hitch.

A New Year

2016 has the chance to go down as the greatest year that North America has ever had in Counter Strike Global Offensive. In 2016, North American teams not only have already managed to end their tumultuous affinity with finishing in the groups of the major, but have also managed to go farther than ever before as Team Liquid managed to finish in the finals of the most recent major. This finals appearance has also come prepackaged with a semifinals appearance at the first major of the year.

These positive results in 2016 come right after an extremely disappointing year in North American Counter Strike. In 2015, other than a three week period over the summer where Cloud 9 racked up results, no North American team managed to aggregate any sort of meaningful results at large events.

Due to the ridiculous amount of failure that plagued North America in 2015, the expectations thrust upon the region for the next year were quite low; as such, the region has definitely managed to surpass those expectations that were set. All that remains for North American teams now is to accentuate the accomplishments of the region in the three months that remain in order to establish 2016 as the greatest year for North American Counter Strike yet.

Putting it All Together

These next three months look to be an important period in North American Counter Strike history. Over these three months, top North American teams will look to take on the international stage and make their mark on it. However, all the action will not exclusively play out at the highest level of North American Counter Strike. as the lower tier of North American teams will also look to develop their young talents in hopes of finding the future stars of North America.

The future always remains unclear; anyone who claims to know what will happen one-hundred percent in the future with any degree of certainty is a fraud. Be that as it may, intelligent predictions can always be made based off a set of facts, and the facts present within the current North American Counter Strike scene only lead to predictions of bright futures.

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Images courtesy of HLTV.org