The three-time Major champion organization Fnatic has enjoyed a successful return to the Valve-sponsored tournament today. The team led by William “mezii” Merriman took down the almighty Cloud9 after a hard-fought overtime on Inferno (19-17).
Fnatic was absent from the Major circuit since 2019 when its Swedish lineup attended IEM Katowice Major. The organization has moved away from Sweden since then and qualified for IEM Rio Major with an international lineup featuring its veteran Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson and the former Copenhagen Flames duo Nico “nicoodoz” Tamjidi and Fredrik “roeJ” Jørgensen.
It looked like Fnatic were up for a walk in the park after they secured an 8-1 advantage versus C9 on their CT side. But the Russian players come back in the second half thanks to a strong CT performance of their own and Dmitriy “sh1ro” Sokolov’s godlike performance, and made Fnatic fight to make overtime. Fnatic kept their cool during the extra rounds and overcame C9 to win by 19-17 and move to the 1-0 pool of the Challengers Stage.
Sh1ro finished the game far ahead of his teammates in the fragging department thanks to his 37 kills and was by far the best player of the match despite C9’s loss. Fnatic, on the other hand, had roeJ go huge with 32 kills, assisted by nicoodoz (26).
This match concluded the first round of IEM Rio Major Challengers Stage and now the second round will begin with 1-0 and 0-1 matches throughout the rest of the day.
