When we left you on Friday, we told you that ZywOo was basically on his own against s1mple and NaVi. And, obviously, we were right again.
4 players on Vitality had less than a 1.01 rating in their 2-0 quarter-final loss against the CIS superteam. We don’t need to tell you which ones.
But to be fair to them, the team might have been a bit.. dead, thanks to a cheeky Viking invasion. More on that later.
Okay, NaVi may have beaten off a Vitality-team that snuck through Swiss with a 3-2 record. But a semi-final against Gambit, the best new team of 2021, surely must be a banger, right?
Then the lights came on. The crowd roared. And Gambit crumbled.
Throughout the entire online era, we’ve had to put up with all the grumpy boomers telling us that every result has an asterisk, that "Player X" will crumble at LAN.
Well, we deeply regret having to inform you they might have had a point.
After a tight win over FURIA - after which groove, their coach, admitted nerves played a part - Gambit were absolutely battered by NaVi:
And it was the same story for Heroic, the other emerging power of 2021. After edging out VP for a tight 2-1 win in the quarter-final, they came face to face with G2.
Although, unlike Gambit, they put up a real fight, even clawing back from 13-6 down on map 3, they just couldn’t get it over the line, losing 19-15 in Overtime on Inferno. What a great name for a Podcast, don't you think?
Anyway, remember when cadiaN “couldn’t win Pro League like that”? Well, he definitely can’t win the Major like this, dropping a 0.74 rating in the semi-final. If you double that, you get the rating of NiKo on the other side of the server, a whopping 1.48.
It was exactly what everyone had feared for Heroic on LAN - strong fundamentals, but just not enough firepower. No superstar. No coach in the sky.
It’s not the end of the story for these two teams. It is their first major, their first massive event in front of a crowd. The greatest of all time have all choked, after all. Even s1mple did it - and he… [retracted] .
Sorry, no spoilers. Keep reading.
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