Eternal Fire has managed to pull off the biggest upset of ESL Pro League Season 20, beating the best team in the world in Vitality and eliminating them from the tournament.
VETO
- Eternal Fire removed Mirage
- Vitality removed Ancient
- Eternal Fire picked Anubis
- Vitality picked Nuke
- Eternal Fire removed Dust2
- Vitality removed Vertigo
- Inferno was left over
Map 1: Anubis (Picked: Eternal Fire; Winner: Eternal Fire)
Eternal Fire started off their map pick with a pistol round victory which met with a Vitality force buy win in the following rounds. Vitality managed to put together a few rounds before Eternal Fire was able to win a few rounds of their own in the final rounds of the first half.
Both teams walked in the second half with a leveled scoreline the second half of Anubis failed to separate both sides and it took an OT to find a winner. Eternal Fire carried their momentum from regulation and picked up two out of the three rounds in the first half while the second half saw them close the map with a 16-14 scoreline. w0xic stood out as the best player for EF, besting ZyWoo on multiple duels.
Map 2: Nuke (Picked: Vitality; Winner: Vitality)
Winning the pistol round, Vitality went upto a 3-0 lead before Eternal Fire could get on the board. Vitality looked more in control of their T-side despite which EF managed to squeeze 5 rounds which otherwise would have been a more one-sided half. Vitality walked away with a 7-5 lead in the first half.
Vitality’s dominance was more apparent in the CT side as they stopped all attempts from Eternal Fire to win all the rounds to quickly close out the 2nd half with a very one-sided 13-5 scoreline. With 18 kills and 1.79 IR, Sphinx spearheaded the Vitality offense followed by an impressive display in the defense to get one map each.
Map 3: Inferno (Winner: Eternal Fire)
Vitality’s defense was as airtight as they were gunning for another one-sided map and a strong start suggested that Inferno would go the same way as Nuke. Following difficulties, Eternal Fire managed 3 rounds on their offense which gave them a headway start posting a comeback once they moved to the second half.
The second half saw Eternal Fire put up a stellar defense that quickly cut down the lead as they posted a lead of their own. As soon as the Turkish side was on their way to close out the map, Vitality managed to scrape a few rounds together of the back of several ZyWoo clutches including a 1v5. as we went to another overtime for the second time in this series. It took four OTs for Eternal Fire to close the game with a 22-20 scoreline. XANTARES with 34 kills was the driving force behind this monumental victory.
Eternal Fire has progressed to the next round where they will be facing MIBR and if they manage to perform like they did today, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to assume they would make quick work of the Brazilians.
