ENCE Esports: The New Hope Of Finland
Back in the day, when CS1.5 and CS1.6 were in their prime, Finland was one of the strongest nations in Counter-Strike alongside Sweden, Denmark, the USA, Russia, Poland, France and Ukraine. If you’ve been following the professional Counter-Strike scene for many years, these Finnish teams must be familiar to you: 69°N-28°E, Team Wings, Hoorai, WinFakt. Also, you should know the legendary Suomi players from the past, such as lurppis, contE, ruuit, plastE, BASiC, Aslak, Jigetus, SPIKEONE, Natu, NaSu, Twista and few others we didn’t mention here.
Even though Finland never dominated on the global stage in Counter-Strike, players from this northern country regularly competed at the highest level and were known for their exceptional skills. Actually, the individual skills of Finnish players were always ahead of the esports infrastructure in Finland. While Sweden had Fnatic, SK-Gaming, EYEBallers, Begrip, NiP, and many other teams, as well as DreamHack events and hundreds of small, but regular LAN tournaments, Finland had almost nothing related to esports besides the players itself.
Of course, the best players from Finland were able to nullify the bad esports infrastructure at home by taking their talents to international teams, but this factor became a real barrier for many young and talented Finnish players, who were only making their first steps in competitive esports. People believed that that situation would change with the arrival of CS:GO, but the Finnish scene remained in the shadows… The only player who was able to make an early breakthrough was allu — an ex-member of WinFakt. Aleksi Jalli played for FaZe Clan for more than one year and always was considered as one of the best AWP players in the world.
Probably the only serious, professional esports club from Finland is ENCE eSports. This organization was founded in 2013, but they were able to put together a good CS:GO roster only in 2018. In the last 3–4 years, ENCE has participated in many online and LAN tournaments, but their results haven’t been the greatest. The CS:GO community started to make jokes about their rosters and chances to win games. Once, some random HLTV.org user read the news with the list of participating teams in an upcoming event and wrote «EZ 4 ENCE» in the comments. The community immediately ran with this sarcastic jab at the Finns, and that’s how the legendary meme was born!
For a few years, people made jokes about ENCE, but the situation completely changed this year. The Finnish organization finally decided to bring together a roster with the best available Finnish CS:GO players. And a new era of Finnish Counter-Strike was born!
ENCE eSports CS:GO roster:
- Aleksi «allu» Jalli
- Aleksi «Aleksib» Virolainen
- Jere «sergej» Salo
- Jani «Aerial» Jussila
- Sami «xseveN» Laasanen
- Slaava «Twista» Räsänen (coach)
The newly formed team finished 7th-8th at ESL One: Cologne, then came third at Europe Minor Championship London, second at DreamHack Open Montreal and won a local tournament called ASUS ROG Finnish Championship. But their biggest trophy was waiting for them in the capital of Ukraine.
ENCE was probably the darkest of all darkhorses at StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 6 Finals. The favorites of the event were Mousesports, North, HellRaisers, BIG and compLexity. As far as we knew, nobody thought that the Finnish team could lift the trophy in Kyiv! Their road to the title began in the group stage, where allu and his comrades destroyed TYLOO (16:6 de_inferno), Imperial (16:12 de_train) and Mousesports (16:12 de_mirage) respectively. It’s worth mentioning that ENCE eSports and NRG Esports were the only two teams that advanced to the playoffs with an unblemished 3:0 record!
In the playoffs ENCE remained unstoppable: the German esports powerhouse, BIG managed to win one map in overtime (22:20 de_overpass), but Suomi were stronger on de_nuke (16:10) and de_train (16:12). After this convincing victory, many CS:GO experts took notice of ENCE and the guys didn’t disappoint. The semifinals saw ENCE completely destroy OpTic 2:0 (16:10 de_mirage, 16:7 de_cache). Aleksi «allu» Jalli played amazingly in these matches; just check his stats (K/D +34, 51 kills, 17 deaths)!
The local crowd expected to see Na`Vi, Astralis and some of the world’s best teams in Kyiv at StarSeries Season 6 Finals, but they skipped the event. As a result, a significant percentage of the Ukrainian CS:GO community decided not to go to Kyiv Cybersport Arena, opting to just watch the event from the couch at home. The early departure of HR, Gambit, Mousesports and North almost wholly «killed» the potential for a large turnout in Kyiv, but that didn’t bother ENCE and Vega Squadron. The two Grand Finalists played in front of the tiny crowd, but still put on a great showing of Counter-Strike! All five maps were needed to crown a new StarSeries i-League champion!
