ESL One Cologne NA: Liquid & Evil Geniuses To Grand Finals

Liquid were able to set themselves on top of Chaos. Evil Geniuses secured their 10th match win in a row against FURIA. Both teams are now heading to the Grand Finals.

LIQUID 2-0 CHAOS

Jake “Stewie2k” Yip and his colleagues haven’t arrived completely just yet. The results of recent weeks have gone to show that they are still struggling with their leadership change. That should hardly surprise anyone, however, considering how long Nick “nitr0” Canella had led them into battle.

They were able to make a strong showing against Chaos. On Inferno, the Liquid players mounted a convincing T half and led 14-5. There, the team exposed a weak point. Instead of closing out the map, they let more and more rounds slip to their opponents. Eventually, they got the two missing rounds on the board for a 16-13 victory.

On Mirage, the players finally knew how to handle their lead. Following a 12-3 half, they only needed a few more rounds to reach the 2-0 match victory. While Michael “Grim” Wince struggled on the first map, he secured a 1.48 rating for map #2. Nonetheless, he was overshadowed by the real star of the match. Russel “Twistzz” VanDulken helped himself to 47 kills and a 97 ADR.

EG 2-0 FURIA

Evil Geniuses are continuing their victory run through the North American scene. They haven’t let go of a match in quite a while and never lost to FURIA, in fact. At ESL One Cologne NA, that wouldn’t change.

Even though EG struggled mightily on their CT side of Inferno, they made up for it on the T side with style. The Brazilians were only given one round and most of the time, EG forced them into the save. On a 16-10 scoreline, the Americans fought past FURIA and headed for Nuke, their own map pick.

There, they had to kick things off on the T side. That wasn’t an issue for them, however. Despite the map heavily favoring the CT side, they got 9 rounds on the board for the first half. With this, they had accumulated a sizeable buffer for their CT half. They never let go of their lead and losing only 4 more rounds, they got another 16-10 for the match victory, sending FURIA home.

Tarik “tarik” Celik and Vicent “Brehze” Cayonte secured 1.33 and 1.28 ratings, respectively. Tsvetelin “CerQ” Dimitrov stumbled in this Best-of-Three, which is quite unusual for the otherwise consistent player. But with so much star power on board of the EG roster, not every player has to perform in every match!

ARE EG HEADING FOR THE TROPHY?

On August 21, the two sides had met last. In the Group Stage of ESL One Cologne, they clashed for the Winners’ Match of Group B and for a shot at the playoffs. Back then, Evil Geniuses cut Liquid clean off with an easy 2-0 victory. But since then, more than a week has passed. Michael “Grim” Wince is finding his place within the roster, Liquid have put up some solid performances and they have surely done their homework. They will have identified and hopefully rectified the issues that made them struggle against EG before. Even if Grim should performing as shakily as he did during the Semis – Stewie2k is now wide awake and playing to a level that we haven’t witnessed from the player in quite some time.

The match promises to deliver top-notch Counter-Strike action. This night, at 22:00 CEST, the two sides will clash. Who will succeed and bring home the trophy of ESL One Cologne NA?