jdm64 and nitr0 lead USA v. Universe

The traditional showmatch before the grand final of tier one Counter-Strike events, usually, puts together a team of hometown heroes against some of the best foreign players present in the event. This time, ESL didn't choose just heroes, they went for the legends of NA CS.

The Universe team also has some legends of the North American scene, but they aren’t exactly American. These are players that came to the land of liberty and, in some way or another, made an impact in the regional community.

Team USA will field young star Michael "Grim" Wince, former #8 in the world in 2019, Vincent "Brehze" Cayonte, Captain America himself Nick "nitr0" Cannella, the lounge king Josh "jdm64" Marzano, and the major winning AWPer Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham.

Team Universe is made up of Alistair "aliStair" Johnston, the only player to never grace the NA servers with an American squad or organization, the infamous Owen "smooya" Butterfield, who had a stint with Chaos, Adam "friberg" Friberg, who played in OpTic for the last half of 2017, alongside NA legend Keith "NAF" Markovic, who is also playing today, and Aran "Sonic" Groesbeek who was one of the original members of the Extra Salt team that conquered the heart of all Americans.

The show match is going to be played in Counter-Strike 2 for the first time since April 23rd, given that the show match during the BLAST.tv Paris Major was played on CS:GO.

The last time a Team USA played a show match was during IEM Chicago 2019, and it also featured nitr0, smooya, and friberg. The match was played in Dust2, just like it will be today unless Valve has decided to add more maps to be played.

Team USA vs. Team Universe will start at 12:00PM.