The first day of the ESL One Cologne 2020 saw a matchup between two heavyweights Astralis and Fnatic. The new Astralis seems to be a much stronger side between the two and won the series 2-0 (16-5 nuke, 19-17 train).
The map veto began with Astralis banning mirage and Fnatic removing vertigo. Astralis picked nuke as their first pick and Fnatic chose train to be played as the second map and inferno was left over for the third and final map of the series.
The match began with Astralis starting off things pretty well by picking up the pistol round with the help of Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen and his three glock kills. The first buy round saw Fnatic winning a good retake on the B site and opening the scoreboard for them. The first half saw some great plays from both the team but Astralis winning the half 10-5 in their favor.
The second half of the game was a disaster for Fnatic as Astralis easily won the pistol round and then it was no stopping for them as they did not let Fnatic win a single round in the second half and closed out the map 16-5.
The second map was Train which was Fnatic’s pick and it started off with Astralis on the CT side of the map and yet again they won the pistol round and were determined to close the series 2-0. Although Fnatic did not give away the match so easily and with the help of Ludvig ‘Brollan’ Brolin they won quite a few rounds and the half ended 7-8 in the favour of Astralis.
The second half was quite competitive as both the teams were giving their best to win this map and the rounds were going back and forth and we saw Fnatic playing some amazing counter strike and leading the map 13-9. The youngster Patrick ‘es3tag’ Hansen stepped up for his team and clutched an amazing 1v2 situation and helped his team get back in the game and taking the scoreline 15-15 and heading into overtime. The overtime rounds saw Astralis slighting edging out over Fnatic and winning the map 19-17 and closing out the series 2-0.
The first day of ESL One Cologne 2020 was pretty exciting and there were alot of great matches. Stay tuned for the matches to be held tomorrow and to see who will be crowned as the champions.
