After dealing with doubters and admittedly eating some of their words early on in the VCT EMEA 2024 season, the Fnatic VALORANT roster is back to their winning ways.
In their second match of the VCT EMEA stage one group stage, Fnatic defeated GIANTX in three maps, after losing their previous two matches to Karmine Corp and Team Heretics. Those two straight losses marked the first time since the start of partnership and since Chronicle and Leo joined that Fnatic lost two straight best-of-three matches.
Both matches were brutal losses for Fnatic, for different reasons. The loss to Karmine Corp in the Kickoff playoffs meant no trip to Masters Madrid, breaking the team’s streak of qualifying for international events that went as far back as Champions 2021. But the loss to Team Heretics to start the stage one group stage stung even more, due in part to some surprising boasting from team captain Boaster.
On a podcast with Yinsu Collins after the conclusion of Masters Madrid, Boaster stated he thought the level of play there was quite poor and featured more than the usual amount of mistakes, and that in Fnatic’s current form, they could have beaten every team at that tournament, including Sentinels, Gen.G, and Team Heretics. Specifically, Boaster pointed out that a handful of silly mistakes by Heretics cost them their match versus Sentinels.
With all eyes on the Fnatic-vs-Heretics match, the team once considered the best in the world on Icebox got rolled over on their own map pick, and then lost in overtime on Heretics’ pick of Lotus. Following the result, on another episode of his podcast with Yinsu, Boaster said his previous words weren’t meant to be trash talk or toxic, and noted he was sick during the match week but didn’t blame that for the loss.
While Fnatic is back in the win column, they’re still not yet back to the dominant Fnatic of previous years. Despite decisive wins against their opponents on Bind and Split, they suffered a one-sided loss on their own map pick of Breeze to the still winless GIANTX. Fnatic’s lone win in one of their own map picks this year came in overtime versus Vitality on Lotus in the season opener.
Fnatic will look to string two wins together against Gentle Mates next week on April 17.
