Young Ninjas vs Astralis Talent: First match in 2022

WePlay Academy League Season 3 is a single-elimination tournament for academic squads with a combined prize pool of $100,000. The top 10 online teams and only the four best teams will advance to the LAN finals held in Kyiv at the WePlay arena. This is the only event with the participation of only academic squads. Who will be the best academy in the third season? Will the new academy squads show a decent level against the more experienced opponents? Who will go to Kyiv for the finals, and who will wait until next season? We'll find out the answers to all of these questions very soon. In the meantime, we can enjoy a cool and mature CS.

On January 3, Young Ninjas and Astralis Talent will play their first match in 2022 and their BO2 debut at WePlay Academy League Season 3. Which team will start their journey to the tournament with a win?

In January 2021, NiP announced the signing of a CS:GO academic squad with only Swedes as participants. The Swedish academy only managed to qualify for the WePlay Academy League Season 2 LAN finals for a full year, where they ended up in 3rd place. The brightest representatives of Young Ninjas are LNZ and ztr, who have managed to play for NiP. Despite their brief stint in the main roster, the players had a great experience playing on the shooting guard stage with the best teams in the world. LNZ managed to play in the PGL Major Stockholm 2021, although they finished the event with negative statistics. These two young players had to bring new knowledge and experience to the team to develop and reach the same level as their rivals from MOUZ NXT. But at the moment, their results leave much to be desired, and the team is currently ranked 106th in the HLTV ranking. 2022 may be the starting point of the line-up for the tier-2 level.

Even though Ninja Academy is the favourite to play Astralis Talent, the Danes should not be written off, and they can surprise everyone in their first match of the year. It is very hard to predict the match's outcome, as both teams had an extended break, and now, you can expect anything from them. This match will be played in bo2 format, which is quite unusual for the CS scene where you usually play bo1 or bo3/bo5 format. So, it may be a draw (1-1) or a win to nil (2-0). The Swedes are not all that smooth in terms of the map pool. The Swedish squad's strongest map is overpass with 62% wins, and the NiP academy has less than 50% win rate on all other maps. But compared to the Astralis map pool, the Young Ninjas are still doing very well.

Astralis Academy was formed back in late 2020. At the time, it was considered a very promising project, as the organisation selected the most promising and young players from all over Denmark. As time went on, the line-up gradually changed. Of those first five players, only vigg0 remained, who finished the past year with positive statistics. In 2021 the team still didn't reach at least a tier-3 level, and currently, it's ranked 98th in the top teams' list of HLTV.org. It's hard to say yet what 2022 will be like for the Danish five. It all depends on how they play in WePlay Academy League Season 3. In the previous two seasons, Astralis Talent failed to reach the LAN tournament, and in the new year, they have a great opportunity to fulfil this goal and finally go to Kyiv.

The Danes will play against the Swedes from Young Ninjas in the first match. The Astralis academy is the underdog in this encounter, and the main reason for that is the Danes' map pool. Astralis Talent has five maps with 0% wins and only inferno and vertigo. They have 33 and 50% win rates. This can be explained by the fact that in 2 months, they had only five games in tier-4.5 tournaments in general. The team does not play official games that often. Despite this fact, the chances of winning at least one map are there, as the level of the teams is essentially the same, and there may be a draw.

Although Young Ninjas is the main favourite in this match, Astralis Talent will win on the first map, and Young Ninjas will take the second map. Bookmakers are offering 2.75 for Astralis Talent to win on the first map. Also, you can take 1.90 for Total Under 26.5 rounds on the first map and 2.29 for Total Over 27.5 rounds on the second map.