Get Dunked: The Frankfurt Major - Qualifiers

The list of teams invited, both directly and to the qualifiers,for the upcoming Frankfurt Major have been released (view the details here). Following on from TI4, regional balance has been passed over in favour of team quality; one team from the Americas, three from 'Europe' (one from EU, two from the CIS), and four from China. Inviting the best teams over regional preference is obviously a great idea, and the way Valve seems to be leaning, but is it now time for the qualifiers to follow suit?

Two teams from each regional qualifier will progress to the Frankfurt Major, with two spots in the qualifier up for grabs in the open qualifiers. Just like TI4, the European qualifier is stacked full of talent on paper (even more so when considering Empire are favorites for the open qualifier), yet receives the same number of 'slots' as the Americas. Take a team like Stark Esports (formerly 4ASC), in any other region they would be favorites to make it to the main event, yet in Europe they will struggle; the same goes for (monkey) Business, NiP, $5JUNGz$ or even maybe Alliance. Each other region seems to have one clear favorite (Cloud9, Fnatic, Invictus Gaming) then it's whoever happens to have a good run out of the rest. Maybe it's time for the qualifiers to start following the main event and unbalance the regional invitations, maybe go back to the early days of tournaments where a LAN that takes place in a region has a majority of teams from that region; a LAN that takes place in Frankfurt would be made up of mostly European teams.

Because people like speculation: Alliance to make it through the qualifiers and win the entire thing. They're back.