Astralis slump to 0-3 elimination at Pro League Season 22

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 06/10/2025

Astralis became the first team eliminated from ESL Pro League Season 22, as the Danish roster capitulated against FaZe Clan.

The Danish roster lost an uncompetitive Bo3 2-0, losing their pick of Ancient 13-7 before an even more abject Dust 2, which saw the roster once again failing to win a single T round.

The loss follows defeats to Aurora and Falcons, as Astralis exit ESL Pro League Season 22 with a 0-3 record in the main event.

Astralis’ T-side woes continue

The series was a continuation of Astralis’ abject T-sides in the absence of Martin ‘stavn’ Lund, who stepped away from the roster due to personal circumstances.

The roster, which had often struggled to find aggression at the best of times, lost a significant source of firepower and replaced him with an Emil ‘Magisk’ Reif, who is another player who naturally would prefer to trade than be traded.

In Stage 1 of the event, Astralis went two consecutive games without a T-side round on their own map pick of Nuke against Ence and GamerLegion, resulting in 0-12 halves.

The series saw HooXi take the most opening duels, recording a lamentable 2/12 opening K/D record, with jabbi taking the second most, going 2/6 in opening duels.

While HooXi may be the sacrificial lamb for the current Astralis roster, intending to set up trades at the cost of his life, the same cannot be said for the rest of the Astralis roster.

Certainly, there can be some grace paid to Astralis, who lost a star piece mid-season, and had to fill that gap on short notice.

That being said, fans will not want to watch months more of stagnant Counter-Strike.

No timeframe has been given for stavn’s return, and Astralis will not want to play the PGL Budapest Major without finding solutions to their structure.

Why is rain playing Pro League Season 22?

In truth, while Astralis’ T-side struggles generally continued against FaZe, their CT-side did not fare much better against FaZe as they were run over by the new duo of David ‘frozen’ Čerňanský and Russel ‘Twistzz’ Van Dulken.

Unexpected stand-in, Håvard ‘rain’ Nygaard, who was benched only a week ago, had a field day against Astralis, recording a 1.64 rating on Dust 2.

rain will only be playing at ESL Pro League Season 22 before returning to the bench thereafter, with Jakub ‘jcobbb’ Pietruszewski taking his place.

FaZe were forced to use rain for the event following the loss of the invited core to the event, with their current roster only featuring two of the five invited players.

Tournament regulations specify that the “core” of the invited roster and the playing roster must be the same, meaning three of the five invited players must attend the event.

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.

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