The strongest superteam in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is heading to its fourth grand final in three months.
After a 2-0 victory, FaZe Clan is now the first team ready for the ESL Pro League Odense grand finals, as the European mix dismantled Fnatic on both Mirage and Overpass.
The series began on Fnatic’s map pick Mirage. A strong pistol round from the Swedish team, which only recently returned to making deep runs at events, gave Fnatic a comfortable 3-0 lead on their map pick. FaZe, however, who have spent the majority of 2017’s latter half as the world’s top-ranked team, easily clawed their way out of their initial deficit—much in part due to the always deadly Desert Eagle play of Bosnian superstar Nikola “NiKo” Kova?.
From an initial lead, Fnatic only strung together two more rounds in the first half, as FaZe overtook them with little struggle, ending the first half with nine rounds to Fnatic’s six. The second half proved to be less exciting—FaZe only lost a single round to their opponents, and secured Mirage with a dominant 16-7 scoreline.
The second map of the series was Overpass—one of the most iconic maps of this current iteration of FaZe. Having already been considered one of the strongest maps of FaZe in-game leader Finn “karrigan” Andersen’s previous team Astralis, his tactical prowess in combination with the team’s overall firepower has seen even the strongest of teams crumble.
Fnatic did, however, put on an impressive showing on the map. Once again winning the initial pistol round as Counter-Terrorists, Fnatic kept up with the overwhelming favorites. But despite the even first half, FaZe’s Håvard “rain” Nygaard consistently kept tabs on the Swedes throughout the second half—which once again saw FaZe run away with their lead. After winning eight rounds to Fnatic’s three, the Swedes were forced to concede the semifinal match, as FaZe ended the map with a 16-10 victory.
