Liam Crowley, the head of Gotfrags Call of Duty department, released the Call of Duty 4 European rankings yesterday, with Meet Your Makers unsurprisingly finishing on top.

1 Meet Your Makers
2 fnatic
3 Team Dignitas
4 eSuba.HAL 3000
5 H2k.Qpad
6 TEK-9 Networks
7 SK Gaming
8 LowLandLions
9 Roskilde Ravens
10 EXABYTE

The biggest shock came as unfancied Finnish side k1ck heavily beat eSuba.HAL 3000, the supposed fourth best team in Europe. A 17 – 7 mauling on Vacant left little to play for come the second map, Crash. 'Roope' was particularly impressive, top fragging on both maps and recording a +13 (Vacant) and +7 (Crash) kill to death ratios.

eSuba.HAL 3000 versus k1ck

The second surprise, also in group B, came from Polish side UF Gaming, who overhauled the 10th ranked British side EXABYTE, with a deficit of ten rounds over two maps, 15 – 25. The poor opening day result means that one of the sides is almost certainly going to struggle to make it beyond the group stage, regardless of how sympathetic other results may be.

EXABYTE versus UF Gaming

In other matches from around Europe, insidiae versus Team Impact in group A finished 24 – 24 (Vacant: 10 – 14, Crash 14 - 10); the best possible score from the perspective of either SK Gaming or Team Coolermaster, who clash on Sunday. The pressure to secure a victory or prevent a whitewash won't be as significant, when the two top sides find themselves playing the rest of their group stage matches in the following weeks.

insidiae versus Team Impact

The final match from play day one, saw the recently shuffled Epsilon side, take a narrow five point win over Intense. The two sides drew on Vacant, 12 – 12. The former professional Warcraft III player, Joona 'Konna' Parikka of Meet Your Makers fame, started well but struggled in the second half of Vacant, along with 'plaekki' recording negative stats and leaving the majority of work to be done by 'id3' who finished Vacant top of the server with a 30 – 19 kill to death ratio, and highest score with 158.

Epsilon eSports versus Intense

The second map was slighty more comfortable, with only five rounds the difference between the teams; 13-8 in favour of Epsilon eSports. A result which may prove invaluable as they share a group with the number one team in the world (according to Gotfrag), Meet Your Makers, or then again, judging by the opening day results, it may mean nothing at all.

Clanbase EuroCup XVII Coverage