From June 15 to 19, the CS:GO BLAST LAN event was held in Lisbon. Eight prominent teams fought to win and get to the BLAST Premier: World Final 2022, which will be held in December and have a prize fund of $1 million.
On Sunday evening, eight months after its success at the Stockholm major, Natus Vincere defeated the French-Danish team Vitality in the finals and won the LAN event. This victory is especially precious because the Ukrainian team's success was hardly probable before the tournament. Read what conclusions we can make after the CS:GO event, which brought us a lot of emotions in our material.
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The leaders are on the sidelines
FaZe Clan and ENCE were considered the tournament favorites and not for nothing. The teams started their path in groups A and B, respectively, and given their current form, their decisive match was to be held on Sunday. However, the mistakes they made on Thursday influenced the favorites' results. Faze lost to G2 during the group stage, where NiKo showed remarkable accuracy in the series with a 1.4 ranking. ENCE couldn't do anything in the tough series against the new OG team. On Friday, FaZe met with Natus Vincere while ENCE played against Team Vitality in the quarterfinals.
In the first quarterfinals, Natus Vincere blew the winners of the last major to smithereens. The Ukrainian team reminded the Europeans that they were undefeatable on Dust 2, and electroNic showed that he could impact a lot even as a captain. On the second map, NaVi players beat their opponents, not letting them win at least a round. They smashed FaZe Clan 16-2 on Dust 2 and 16-1 on Inferno and avenged their loss in the major finals.
In the second Friday evening match, the French-Danish team Vitality tried to create another sensation. On Overpass, ZywOo and his teammates had a great start on the offensive and made it to a logical 1-0 against ENCE in the series. However, their opponents survived the hard start on Nuke and changed the score on the map in their favor. With a score of 15-12, both teams were mentally preparing for the third map. ENCE managed to hold the round on the defense until the last seconds. Five seconds before the end of the round, Snappi and hades decided that the attack would no longer be able to implement the bomb and began to leave the plant, but ZywOo coolly set the bomb and then made the two most important kills in the clutch at this tournament. The sudden turnover in the 28th round led to additional rounds, and then Vitality came back 19-7 on the map and 2-0 in the series.
The teams' performance, in general, was not so good, either. It was obvious from the movements and shooting that the team was past its peak strength, which it was gaining for the spring tournaments, and didn't have enough energy for the BLAST tournament. FaZe interrupted its winning streak and will probably find a new motivation in this defeat to return to the top of competitive CS.GO. And the round which made ENCE take only 5th-6th place at the tournament will be one of the most dramatic denouements of this year.
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We cannot help but mention those who came into the spotlight as the future of the world CS:GO arena.
A young Russian talent from G2 Esports, m0NESY, held a good tournament. After the group stage, other LAN event participants probably had nightmares about his duo with NiKo. On Wednesday, Ilya felt uncomfortable on the first map against Vitality, but he showed all his power on Inferno and Mirage and contributed to the victory in the first series a lot. There was also an incredible highlight where m0NESY handled the clutch in a 1 vs. 3 situation.
And on Thursday, his teammate rushed to help him against FaZe. On the third map, m0NESY and NiKo lynched their opponent, with KD ratios +16 and +17 respectively. It was probably after this map that their opponent lost heart and could not oppose the future BLAST Premier: Spring Finals winners.
With each tournament, the team finds new opportunities to fulfill its potential, and m0NESY plays a vital role in it. G2 is on the rise, and with a little (but important) success in Lisbon, G2 will probably find its game and claim victory in the next events.
The OG team's performance can be also called the tournament sensation. The renewed team had a substitute player degster, but Abdulkhalik demonstrated an incredible performance and proved his high level once again. Thanks to his kills, the team managed to hold the advantage in the first match against Natus Vincere, and in the match against ENCE, he held back the tournament favorites with the help of his teammates and ended the series in his favor.
In the semi-finals against NaVi, the Europeans had a good fight but didn't make it to the grand finals. During the BLAST Premier Spring Finals, he got to the LAN event top 10 rating, being behind only NaVi players, ZywOo and NiKo. However, one may ask a logical question after the tournament: can the Russian player stay on the team on a regular basis?
He cooperated with his teammates well. The OG players' actions were synchronized, and it didn't look like a stand-in performed for them. Abdulkhalik was very positive about his teammates. And perhaps the only pain from the Lisbon performance was in flameZ's hands. During the tournament, degster gave his teammate furious high fives, and the audience noticed it. The analysts worry that flameZ won't feel his hands soon. The Israeli supported the stand-in.
Okay, I will tell you how it works. When he slaps you really hard, the blood goes into the hand because it’s painful, so your hand is always awake and you are ready to flick. So it’s basically, you pay with pain, but you get more headshots.
Those who are born to win will not lose
For NaVi, the Lisbon tournament started with the loss against OG and talks that sdy won't be able to fully replace Boombl4 in the team roster. In the first bo3, the Ukrainian team's main star s1mple was not so successful and finished the series with negative KD. But this confrontation cannot be called a beating. The team fought until the last rounds, and the first map of the series was taken 16-7.
Because of Wednesday's loss, Natus Vincere had no day off and had to fight against a strong German team, BIG, to get to the quarterfinals. In this match, the Ukrainian team won confidently, and the team's coach, B1ad3, could only pray that the roster would catch a "winning wave" and find its game.
We believe in our system and at the moment we will play almost any series that we played throughout this year. And we have good chances this year to win some of them. It will be the same here if we find the groove, the vibes of the event. We have players who can show incredible things. The lineup is really strong.
After the incredible loss to FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere had a rematch against young and ambitious athletes from OG, who were preparing to break their losing streak and show decent performance at the tournament. This match was a challenge for s1mple and co. NaVi had a hard time on all three maps. On Dust, it started to control the map only in the second half on the defense, winning 9-16. On Inferno, OG confidently attacked with a score of 10-5, and their opponents couldn't get additional rounds on the map (14-16). On Mirage, Natus Vincere also didn't hold the advantage on the offensive and found its game on the defense and brought their tag to the finals only thanks to its experience and character, defeating its opponent 16-10 on the map. But after the hard semi-finals, all the experts said that it would be NaVi that would lift the trophy after the Sunday finals.
Bet on CS:GO with 1xBetI believe NaVi will win today, it looks stronger from the individual side, and its maps are more balanced. Team Vitality has prepared Overpass for this tournament and will pick it up in the finals. It's difficult to say if it will win or not, but it has some chances. NaVi has good Mirage and Inferno, but in such a situation, B1ad3 chooses Mirage more often, and Vitality is not as good at it. If it comes to the third map, we will probably see Dust 2, which both teams master, but NaVi still looks preferable. My opinion: 75 to 25 in favor of NaVi.
In the final bo3 against Vitality, the only rounds NaVi could lose were the pistol ones at the beginning of the match. On the Mirage and the Overpass, the French and the Danes opened the score on the maps. But there was real embarrassment on the defensive side when the eco round attack won the round with one AK and four pistols. Vitality's game worsened, and Natus Vincere took the series of 9 consecutive rounds. The team led by apEX tried to resist, but the minor series of the won rounds were not implemented during the comeback. Despite the 16-8 score on Mirage, both players and Portuguese viewers saw that Natus Vincere dominated in this confrontation.
Overpass could have saved the French-Danish team; at first, they took four consecutive rounds. But the Ukrainian team used its opponent's mistake and demonstrated a series of 13 consecutive winning rounds, finally breaking the Vitality players' morale. All the team played like clockwork. We should especially note b1t for the incredible moments when he took two or three opponents in a round in the collector. Once, he even eliminated all the team.
The second map ended with a score of 16-5, and after defeating their opponent, happy NaVi players went to get a trophy. S1mple became the tournament MVP. He braced up after the loss on the first day and demonstrated a top-notch level of play on other maps with the final ranking of 1.37 (the best in the tournament). Oleksandr also has the best KD ratio (1.5). In the final duel against ZywOo, he once again reminded us that the Frenchman is not the top 1 CS:GO player, beating him both statistically and during the face-to-face encounters in the finals.
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