Goliath Gaming are the second of four teams to receive an invite for DreamHack Delhi. They hail from South Africa and are one of the stronger teams from the region.
The Squad – Of Loans, Arrivals and Other Changes
The lineup is led by 18-year-old Dean ‘massacRe’ Davids, who has been an active player for the team since the latter part of 2017. The youngster knows how to utilise the resources at hand to the optimum, with an average damage of 6.6 per round through utility.
Rikus ‘ZipZip’ Klue is the Primary AWPer for Goliath. The 23-year-old hasn’t had a good last three months and more but has been a part of the team’s journey from 2018. 19-year-old Tyler ‘adaro’ Oliver joined Goliath in 2018 as well and is one of the true stars of the South African organisation.
adaro is one of the many players in the CSGO scene that has taken to the SG meta and has used the AK rather sparingly compared to the scoped rifle. The newest addition to their lineup is 15-year-old Wiljahne ‘mango’ Smith.
mango could be classed as a prodigy with his statistics at such a young age. But, it would be interesting to see how the youngster performs now that he has joined a stable team and an organization to support his mission.
Interestingly, mango is yet to play for Goliath and there is a major doubt on whether he would be on the flight to Delhi. Richard ‘deviaNt’ Groves was one of the first players to join Goliath, along with massacRe.
The 31-year-old played for Goliath on November 25, 2019 but is no longer listed as an active player for Goliath on HLTV. The other player that rounded out the roster before mango’s arrival was Dimitri ‘Detrony’ Hadjipaschali, who was on loan from Bravado Gaming.
Again, Detrony played for Goliath Gaming on November 25, 2019 in a defeat to Sinister5. But, the 29-year-old’s loan period ended on November 20.
According to DreamHack Delhi, Goliath are coming in with three of the players from their active lineup, with ZikZik, massacRe and adaro teaming up with Big 5 star Aaron ‘SloWye’ van der Walt and Gamedock player Thulani ‘LighteRTZ’ Sishi.
The two are stalwarts of the South African Counter Strike scene and it will be interesting to see how fast they can gel in with the core of Goliath.
Goliath have dominated the South African scene somewhat in 2019, bagging three titles – Syntech Masters, Mettlestate ROG Invitational and ESEA Season 31: Open Division South Africa.
Although, Goliath opened their ESEA Open Season 32 account with a defeat to Sinister5 in straight maps and one might wonder just how good their morale will be coming into DreamHack Delhi.
Expectation
It is tough to gauge just how good Goliath can perform at Delhi without having a proper knowledge of what the lineup can do on a server. But, their loss to Sinister5 won’t do any good to the morale.
The group draw might play an important role in making any estimation as to what Goliath can do at DreamHack Delhi. There hasn’t been much time for Goliath to iron out any potential problems with the two stand-ins, if you will. Goliath will be arriving as an unknown quantity, having not played a single competitive map with this lineup. They might run into issues with communication and chemistry on the server, which will affect their performances.
There could be surprises in store but we expect it to be tough for Goliath to get out of the groups, nevertheless.
