The quarter finals of ESL Pro League Season 10 were held yesterday at the Odense arena in front of fully packed crowd. Both the quarter finals did not pan out as expected. One can say that the underdogs came out victorious in both matches.
Team Liquid fell to Fnatic in the first quarter final losing out the series 2:0. In the second match up, Evil Geniuses fell short to Mousesports 2:1 in a game where map had a scoreline of 16:0.
Here is a recap of both these matches:
1. Team Liquid vs Fnatic-
Fnatic are back! They are back with a bang and are playing some heads up counter strike. They already announced their comeback with a victory at DreamHack Malmo few months ago. After which the only thing required was to produce consistent results. Boy do they look good now!
The game started with Fnatic picking Overpass and Liquid picking Inferno with Mirage being selected as the decider if required. It was a similar story from the ECS Season 8 Finals where too Fnatic picked Overpass and mauled Liquid. This time out the scoreline was a little respectable for Liquid as they lost 11:16. Young and upcoming star “Brollan” topp fragged the map with 23 kills.
Going onto Inferno, it was expected that Liquid would put up a show and then close out the map on their strong CT side. The reality, Liquid never got a chance to show off their CT side as Fnatic raced to 10:5 lead in the first half and then shifted to the T side and won the first 3 rounds. Liquid did manage to string 5 rounds in between but were left with a very little margin of error and succumbed to a defeat. They lost the map 8:16 with Fnatic fixing their place in the semis with a red hot Na’VI. “Brollan” again top fragged with young gun showing no signs of slowing down. As for Liquid it ends a forgettable second half of 2019 and need of some rest after a long and successful year for them.
2. Evil Geniuses vs Mousesports-
Before the match experts predicted that the team with better 4th and 5th players i.e. the more experienced pros (“chrisJ and Karrigan for Mouz , “tarik and “stanislaw” for EG) would win the series. The expert prediction was dead right as “chrisJ” proved to be the difference between the teams. The veteran player produced his one of the finest performance of the year by racking up 61 kills across 3 maps.
Mouz picked Train as their map choice with EG choosing Inferno and Nuke was selected to be the decider.
Starting on Train, Mouz were given the T side:the less favoured and more difficult side on the map. Yet, they still managed to win the half 11:4 with EG not able to get hold of their economy. After a first half showing it was a matter of time before Mouz emerged victorious 16:6.
Moving on to Inferno, Mouz continued the momentum and raced to 5:1 lead on the CT side before EG clawed their way back into the game. Mouz in the second half even had a matcha and series point at 15:14 but could not convert it. The map went into overtime and EG held their nerve to win out 19:17.
The best and the most surprising result came in the 3rd map where Mouz mauled EG and won 16:0. Yeah, you read that right 16:0! EG simply ran out of steam and could not produce any sort of fight. It was a perfect result for Mouz IGL “karrigan” who was playing in front of his home crowd. Mousesports eventually booked a semifinal match up against the mighty Astralis. With a total of 67 kills it was “Woxic” had the most kills across the three maps. “Ropz” the third highest rated player in the tournament ably supported “Woxic”.
