Overall I felt like Paris was the superior team. Quite a few critical mistakes in some clutch situations, especially at the end of Anubis, made the match much closer than it should have been though. There's still a lot of room for improvement. GG !

But damn, Kruise's insane sound barrier followed by Hyp's triple kill on Tracer to end Dorado's defense was just magical.

Pretty impressive match for Paris overall, even if not too unexpected given the meta. I was personally very pleased with Hyp's performance, I knew he was good but I wasn't too sure how he would fare in OWL. Looked very solid in this match, especially on Route 66.

That throw at the end of Paris' Volskaya defense was painful to watch. Other than that, they greatly outclassed London on that map.

I've never really understood why every time an OW tournament uses a double-elimination bracket, there is no bracket reset possible during the grand final. I guess it might be because of time constraints (and also because playing two Bo5 in a row must be pretty tiresome) but still, always seemed unfair to me...

That being said, this was a great match, ggs to both teams !

According to Liquipedia he's going to turn 18 on January 27th, so he should be.

https://twitter.com/Hurricane/status/1069675362970468352

Pretty surprised about Knoxxx but I'm really happy he's coming back to OW as a coach. I hope things work out well for both of them.

Greyy ruining such a perfect White Blue Red flag meta, NotLikeThis

What a match ! SMS definitely belong among the favorites to win the whole thing, imo.

I'd just like to point out a tiny thing: French stream link leads to O'gaming OW channel, while the correct stream is actually on the regular O'gaming channel (https://www.twitch.tv/ogamingtv).

GG wp SMS, quite a nice performance for a team that was put together so recently.

What I like about the current meta is that it's probably the most diverse we've ever had in terms of hero picks. Almost every hero is somewhat viable depending on the map played (Torb, Reaper, Symm and Mei are the only exceptions that come to my mind, and even those have tiny niches they can sometimes fill). Sure there's a lot of tanky/GOATs comps, but even those have multiple variants. The only pick that's here almost 100% of the time is D.Va.

Dive golden era might have been more flashy, but it wasn't allowing as much diversity, which made it feel a bit stale, imho. But it's all a matter of personal preference in the end.

It wasn't actually a prediction, it was written right after China's victory in the semi-final. That's why there's so many downvotes.

Leave's performance as Doomfist on Blizzard World defense should be rated R.

Incredible match, heartbreaking result. GGs to SK, but mad props to UK, they were as close as one can be.

It might only have been a draw but damn, UK played out of their minds at the end of King's Row.

Edit : Well, could make exactly the same comment about Volskaya ! Their mastery of GOATS-like comps clearly seem above that of SK.

This did not age well.

Oof, that one hurt. The end of Eichenwald, when France lost the fight despite a huge shatter by Benbest resulting in two early kills, tilted me off the planet. So much could have been different...

In the end all the maps were pretty close, but Canada definitely looked more solid, especially on the DPS side. GGs to them, deserved victory !

Wow. Quite the upset ! GG LANimals !

Btw, third year in a row that USA loses in QF (even though admittedly, two of those defeats were against SK)...

Can the lads actually pull it off ?

Your wish has been granted. :)

Former Eagle Gaming head coach Féfé joins Paris' staff.

Pretty good pickup if you ask me.

Edit : Seita, former Gigantti coach, also joins Paris as Strategic Coach.

Coaching staff is looking really good so far.

That's from ToMaBYou, who also worked as an illustrator for the French OWWC twitter.

Not much of a surprise anymore, but it's official now : https://twitter.com/OverwatchParis/status/1054669773865435136

One notable thing, maybe : One unknown player (?) can be seen in the image that was posted (between So0n and Shadowburn). There might be more to come.

https://twitter.com/LAValiant/status/1052997798243663872.

Gunba is joining Boston Uprising : https://twitter.com/BostonUprising/status/1052997754710974464.

As for SoOn and daemoN, nothing official yet (LA Valiant website only mention "an Overwatch League franchise to be named later") but they're presumably headed for Paris, as the leaks revealed earlier.

Kinda sucks for HSL to once again have their main tank player poached away, though it's obviously nice and deserved for ProGi to be able to join contenders directly.

Yes, basically staff and players hadn't been paid for the last 3-4 months (and apparently it wasn't the only issue, although if the rest is still kept private). Some of them are taking legal action against the company at the moment.
If you want to know more you might want to check this video, it got English subtitles and is a pretty decent summary of the whole mess.

Only contenders it seems, as he says in this tweet. Academy perhaps ?

Seems so.

Living that moment Soon went super saiyan on Anubis to secure the 3-0 in the live audience... no words for this. GGs !!

Even if France was clearly the superior team, Danye still had an impressive performance. Hope we'll get to see more of him in the future, dude's insane !

What a clutch by Hearthbeat (and the healers) to cap Anubis first point. Nice !

Props to Germany, was actually a really close match. Kodak was insane on Route 66. GGs !

What an insane match ! GGs to China, but also mad respect for Denmark, really didn't picture them to be so good before that group stage. I hope we'll see them at Blizzcon !

Spain defence on Numbani 1st point during 2nd attack phase uff

Name your favourite (feel free to say why too):
OWL team - LA Valiant
Current non-OWL team(s) - Eagle Gaming, Runaway, CAG
Pre-OWL team(s) - Rogue, EnvyUS
Player (only one allowed) - So0n
Other players - Unkoe, Taimou, Poko, Carpe, Ryujehong, Linkzr
Streamer(s) - Seagull, Ster (not so much anymore, sadly), Alphacast
Caster combo - Uber/MrX
Analyst duo - Bren/Sideshow
Main desk presenter - Goldenboy
Match - OWL S1 finals (not intrinsically the best, but I was too damn hyped)
Tournament - OWC 2017
In-game moment - Profit's cleanup on Volskaya 2nd point during OWL finals
Clutch moment - Same as above
OWL entrance - Didn't pay that much attention to it

About your personal Overwatch career:
SR now - /
SR peak - 2037 (After doing only placements in S4 - the only time I actually bothered to do it)
SR goal for this season - None, I don't really have time to invest in comp
Main class - Support
Main hero - Zen
Other heroes you regularly play - Roadhog, Soldier, Ana, Mercy
Favourite hero - Zen
Hero you hate - Symmetra
Favourite map - Nepal
Map you hate - Hanamura. And pretty much all of 2CP maps, really
Favourite game mode - Control
Least favourite game mode - 2CP
Best play - Nothing comes to my mind
Best achievement - /
Reason why you play Overwatch - I don't play it that much, but it's usually to have some fun with a friend
What got you into Overwatch in the first place - Was following Ster when he got into it. Also, a friend of mine started playing it

About other video games:
Games you are playing at the moment - Rocket League, Trackmania, various Pokémon games, a crappy little-known MMO called Champions of Regnum
Other esports you watch - Pokémon VGC, RLCS, Trackmania, SSB4/Melee (Only occasionally for all these, I only closely follow OW esport)
First game you ever played - Pokémon Sapphire
Favourite game as a kid - Pokémon Sapphire
Favourite game of all time - Pokémon, hard to pick a single version. Heart Gold maybe ?
Biggest achievement in a video game - Becoming one of the best healers in the crappy MMO mentioned above I suppose. Or getting a sizeable number of full-odds shiny Pokémon, an old hobby of mine.

About you personally (no pressure to answer any of this if you don't want to):
Age - 22
Location - France, Paris
Describe yourself in 3 words - Introverted, Bored, TooMuchHair (Ok, I cheated a little)
Favourite music artist - Rammstein
Favourite music genre - Metal
Sports you play - Badminton
Sports you watch - NBA, Olympics, Football WC
Hobbies - Reading, playing video games, learning about chemistry
Weird fact about you - I only have 3 wisdom teeth. Awesome, right ?
Shameless social media plugs - Not much into that

Really happy this match is on Sunday, it's the only day I could get a ticket for. Eager to watch it live. :D

Of course it was the hardest group, there's no arguing that. My point was that no matter how you shuffle the groups, there would've been one at least one with 3 "top nations" (which I consider to be on paper SK, Finland, Sweden, Russia, UK, USA, Canada, France and China. Only my opinion of course, that's debatable). The fact that this death group had SK in it makes it more unbalanced yes, but in the end someone had to be that ninth team, which won't change as long as we only get 8 at Blizzcon. It just sucks that it happened to Russia two years in a row.

They definitely would've had more chance of qualifying, but "easily" might be a bit too much here. I don't see Sweden, China, UK or France as necessarily that much weaker than Russia on paper.
In the end at least one group was bound to be unbalanced given the format, it's just sad that it happened to Russia once again...

That King's Row performance by Philly was unreal

I'm not saying he's not a good player. He definitely has great shotcalling abilities, a ton of experience, and as an ex-rogue he might have a better synergy with the team they picked up. I still think it's a decent choice. But at the end of the day, Winz has not been playing high-level profesionnal overwatch for about a year now, whereas Dridro has revealed himself as one of the best EU Mercy in the meantime. Given the prevalence of Mercy in the meta (even though it could still change by the time the WC starts), I think it's understandable that a lot of people would question this decision.

And here is the final 7-player roster.

Kinda surprised they decided to go with Winz over Dridro. That team intro video is sick, though.

Yeah actually Knoxxx replied to the tweet with an ironic "#aveclespotes" (withthemates), and then elaborated that he didn't agree with the team selection. Some drama going on behind the scenes, I guess.

https://twitter.com/avecle6/status/1014176450382123008

Also, here is a blog post explaining the reasoning behind these choices

Apparently, she won't be available until Stage 4.

Source : https://news.unikrn.com/article/brigitte-overwatch-league-stage-4-debut?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=news&utm_campaign=brigittes4owl032218&utm_term=overwatch&utm_content=ds

There was a Winz interwiew on a French youtube channel recently, and he stated that he didn't really want to be a coach yet, because he still wants to compete as a player and feels like his experience would allow him to be a valuable asset even today. He also said that it's hard to come back as a player once you've been labelled as a coach/analyst (and I guess Reinforce is a good exemple of that), which his another reason why he's not ready to move to coaching yet.
So as much as I would like it, I don't see it happening very soon...