Playing with heavy hearts, the FUT Esports VALORANT roster representing Turkey has delivered just the second victory for their region at an international VCT tournament—and most certainly the region’s most dominant win at the VCT LOCK//IN.
The series started out with a one-sided blowout on Rex Regum Qeon’s pick of Lotus. Even with two duelists on their attack side, RRQ looked uncoordinated and disjointed, and FUT punished them round after round, taking the map via a dominant 13-3 scoreline.
RRQ recovered and didn’t get completely blown out on Pearl, taking a 7-5 lead at halftime after their attacking side. But their bad habits resurfaced on defense and FUT took advantage, recovering from an 11-7 deficit with a streak of six straight rounds highlighted by opening kills and overwhelming map control. MOJJ punctuated the win with a 4K in the post-plant.
Before the series even started, an emotional FUT roster stood together on stage for a moment of silence to pay respect to those lost in the recent earthquakes that have decimated Turkey and other surrounding countries, before delivering a huge win for their region. The victory today prompted a huge celebration from the massive FUT watch party.
The last and only win at an international event for a team that competed in Turkey prior to today was SuperMassive Blaze’s group stage victory over Paper Rex at Masters Berlin in 2021. No team out of Turkey even managed to reach an international VCT event in 2022, despite Champions being hosted in Istanbul. The Turkish teams were unable to get past the top EMEA teams like FPX, Fnatic, and Liquid during Challengers play.
Turkey also lost in the Alpha bracket of this event, although BBL Esports did hold their own against a dominant DRX team and even took a map off the eventual semifinalists.
With a win under their belts, the FUT roster will now await the winner of 100 Thieves vs. EDward Gaming.
