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After almost a month of action in the ESL Pro League Season 16, the battle field that started with the top 24 CS:GO teams is finally down to the final two, with Team Liquid and Team Vitality standing. It is time to enjoy the Best of 5 Grand Final match, which will take place on October 2nd, with the champion taking home the huge prize of $175,000, qualifying to BLAST World Final 2022 and IEM Katowice 2023, as well as earning more chances to win the Intel Grand Slam race.
After seeing Team Vitality crash out in the Group Stage and the Playoffs of EPL, the French team now enters the Grand Final as the slight favorites against Team Liquid. In fact, the https://gg205.bet/en-ca/ website opened them as -227 favorites. Let’s take a closer look at how these two finalists feel after paving the way to the final.
Team Liquid
After consistently finishing in top 10 over the past three years, Liquid has broken that streak and secured the best-ever finish in their first Big Event trophy since IEM Chicago in 2019.
The road to the Grand Final has not been easy, but the team has managed to come out on top after beating such teams as Riders, Evil Geniuses, Cloud9, Fnatic, and MOUZ. Of those matches, four of them went to a third and deciding map, so expect the Grand Final to be a long series.
Group Results
Liquid finished third in Group D with a record of 3-2, after losing to FURIA and Eternal Fire. That said, the American team closed the first division of the event with a 2-0 sweep over Cloud9 and locked up in the Round of 12 against Fnatic.
After overcoming the first map to beat Fnatic on Inferno with 16-13, Liquid then fell in Overpass. Nico “nicoodoz” Tamjidi played an important part on the first maps, making life very difficult for the NA team. However, Mareks “YEKINDAR” Gaļinskis was the one who put Liquid over the finish line, including the third and final map on Ancient, in which he pulled of 27 deaths and 110.4 units of damage.
Strong Performance at Playoffs
Despite looking a bit shaky over Fnatic in the Round of 12, Team Liquid showed a sharp performance at the Playoffs and reached the Grand Final after defeating MOUZ and Cloud9.
Latvian CS:GO superstar YEKINDAR played an important part in Liquid’s sweep 2-0 against mousesports. The NA powerhouse almost shuttered MOUZ’s defense, mostly due to the Mareks’ successive entries on the B site. They kept the energy going in the matchup against Cloud9 and ran away with a 2-1 victory in the semis.
Team Vitality
It’s no surprise to see Team Vitality sitting amongst the final two teams. However, the French organization has been waiting for the opportunity to raise a Big Event trophy since IEM Winter in 2021. Their road to EPL season 16 Grand Final has been pretty easy even considering the opening series.
The Winner of Group A
Team Vitality was excellent in its Group Stage, finishing first in the rankings after securing a record of 5-0. Such a performance was a demonstration of dominance, especially when considering their opponents in Group A. The French squad won their opening series against Endpoint and Ninjas In Pyjamas in a dominant fashion.
After that, they continued their strong form, winning two in a row against Fnatic (2-1) and Natus Vincere (2-1). French superstar Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut has proved to be an absolute menace to all the Vitality’s rivals, ending the Groups with an average rating of 1.29. Finally, the team closed the first division with a sweep over Team Spirit, securing their Quarterfinal spot.
The Protagonists of Playoffs
The French team eliminated Outsiders (2-0) in the Quarters and then took down G2 (2-0) in the Semifinals of the EPL. One of the Vitality’s strengths is their superstar Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, especially with how he has been performing in the Playoffs.
The French sniper has played 14 maps thus far in the tournament and has finished with a positive rating in all of them. He even surpassed a 2.0 rating in two different games, the first being against Spirit on Nuke and the second against Endpoint on Vertigo.
Should Mathieu keep playing at this level throughout the Grand Final, chances are that the French team will raise a LAN trophy for the EPL season 16.
