The last team in the playoffs of the Pinnacle Cup Championship 2022 has been found. A stellar performance from the predominately Swedish roster of Team Finest meant that they were able to move past Imperial in a 2-0 victory securing their lives at the event. We talked with "twist" about just how great it felt when they managed to surpass the iconic Brazilians and avoid elimination from the tournament: 

Team Finest were by no means expected to go this far at the event and taking down such big names as "fer" and "FalleN" is a challenge no matter what team you are. Despite this, however, they managed to do exactly that. In their first-ever LAN with their roster, Team Finest secured a spot in the playoffs and perhaps more importantly on the big stage in front of a Swedish crowd. "twist" states that it has been a long time since he last played in front of a home-crowd and that he looks forward to doing so tomorrow: 

"twist" and his teammates of Team Finest are set to brawl against the Danish Heroic tomorrow, where the loser will be eliminated from the event. Whilst Imperial are no easy opponent, Heroic is perhaps an entirely different beast to handle. When asked about how sees the game tomorrow going, against a somewhat unorthodox opponent in Heroic, he answered the following: 

Team Finest and Heroic are scheduled to lock horns at 16.00 (CEST) tomorrow. The winner of the clash earns a spot in the Consolidation Final, whereas the loser is out of the event for good. To hear more about what "twist" has to say just after the qualification to the playoffs, you can watch the exclusive interview down below: 

twist

Finest

The 26-year-old Swede was axed today after several subpar performances for Ninjas in Pyjamas.

The Swedes have dropped to their lowest world ranking at 18th since June 2017 after a number of bad runs. Simon "twist" Eliasson has not been rated above 1.00 in rating at a tournament since BLAST Spring 2020.

On Thursday a new Ninja will replace "twist". The 17-year-old Erik "ztr" Gustafsson will act as a stand-in at BLAST Premier Spring when NIP face Astralis in the first Group match. Gustafsson is currently a part of Young Ninjas, which is NIP's talent team.

Ninjas in Pyjamas

In this series, we take a look at the teams that finished 2020 in the Top 20 rankings. Today we take a look at number 17.

NiP started the year by saying goodbye to the last remaining player of the golden era for the Swedish team. In January Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg left the team after a seven and a half year of partnership, that won them 24 events including a major in 2014. Instead, Tim "⁠nawwk⁠" Jonasson was signed as the team's new AWPer.

The Semi-Final run at ESL One Cologne was their best result of the year. The Swedes eliminated Natus Vincere and Astralis on their way but fell in the Semi-Finals against Team Vitality. The performance solidified that the team play was at the right place for the Swedes, who perhaps instead lacked individual firepower and skills with only "Plopski" being rated in the Top 15 performers in the tournament.

Besides a lot of early exits in the events, the low point of the year came when the former Coach of NiP admitted, that he had used the spectator bug back in 2018 in a Twitter-post in September. Faruk Pita left the team in January with Bjørn "THREAT" Pers taking over the role as the Head Coach.

While the results in the past years have not been up to the standards, that we are used to see from the legendary Swedish team, maybe the future will bring some much-needed glory? Ninjas in Pyjamas has just announced, that they will turn their newly founded talent program "Path of a Ninja" into a full academy team. Erik “ztr” Gustafsson has been announced as their first signing.

20: GODSENT[link:{"url":"https://pley.gg/news/spotlight-top-20-godsent/"}]

19: Spirit [link:{"url":"https://pley.gg/news/spotlight-top-20-spirit/"}]

18: CHAOS [link:{"url":"https://pley.gg/news/spotlight-top-20-chaos/"}]

	30 days	90 days
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twist

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Articles mentioning twist

twist: "It's going to be intense"

NIP bench player: "Something had to happen"

Spotlight on the Top 20: Ninjas in Pyjamas

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