BIG And FURIA Take The Trophies At DH Open Summer EU & NA

BIG and FURIA have won the Grand Finals of DreamHack Open Summer EU and NA, respectively. The Germans defeated Heroic in decisive fashion, whereas the Brazilians narrowly grinded out Team Liquid for the victory.

BIG 2-0 HEROIC

The Danes showed incredible resilience against Complexity yesterday and were absolutely deserving of the Grand Finals spot. However, their match against BIG demonstrated why the German players are just a tiny bit better.

Starting on Overpass, Heroic got onto a great lead right away. Unfortunately, BIG reclaimed ground on their T side to make it an even 7-8 half. However, as soon as BIG entered the CT space, they started locking down the sites and won round after round. Finally, they got the map win at 16-11, with Tizian “tiziaN” Feldbusch and Ismailcan “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş outperforming every single player on the server.

Nils “k1to” Gruhne made sure that Heroic couldn’t get off to a great start on Inferno, aceing them in the first round. Again, the teams were tied at half time, but unlike on Overpass, BIG played on T side in the second half. Still, they were able to string rounds together and Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz played out of his mind to deliver a second map win at 16-12. With this performance, BIG have shown to be capable of playing great T and CT sides. Most importantly though, they have won the European DreamHack Open Summer trophy.

FURIA 2-1 LIQUID

The Brazilians had just decimated Chaos on their way to the Grand Finals. But Team Liquid were arguably a much taller task. Yesterday, we asked the question whether the North Americans had prepared enough with Michael “Grim” Wince to win this event. While he has definitely brought a lot of firepower to the roster, this came at the cost of their long-standing in-game-leader Nick “nitr0” Canella.

On Vertigo, Liquid stole the win on a 16-11 scoreline. All of the players showed up, making this a decisive victory and a promising display for the maps to come. On Nuke, Liquid struggled with their T side. Gathering only 5 round wins in the first half, they were down considerably at half time. But their CT side gameplay was strong, giving them a window to reach overtime against the Brazilians. There, unfortunately, FURIA finally got the round wins they needed to end the map in their favor.

On the third map, Liquid unfortunately let their opponents climb onto a 7-1 lead. This proved to be their undoing. Despite Liquid managing to even the half out, FURIA had already won too many rounds on the offense. As Team Liquid still struggled to grind out T side rounds, FURIA quickly got into winning territory. A few close rounds went in the Brazilians’ favor to net them the map and match win at 16-11.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR LIQUID AND BIG?

The leadership workload has certainly taken a toll on Jake “Stewie2k” Yip. On Nuke, the player only got up to 7 kills in 35 rounds. Obviously, he will improve over time, but this doesn’t bode well for the player and the team at all. Unless Stewie figures out how to help the team while staying a relevant fragger, Liquid will stand no chance against international top teams.

There really isn’t a lot to say about BIG. They came into this event as the world’s #1 and expectedly came out on top. However, they will meet a much stronger playing field at ESL One Cologne soon. They have proven to be a beast against the likes of OG and Heroic. But what about Astralis, fnatic, mousesports, or FaZe? We will see in due time whether BIG can hold onto their top spot for much longer.