The ECS Season 7 Finals are currently underway as some of the top Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have been falling and the latest group to join that trend is none other than the Danish dynasty of Astralis.
Matches have been ramping up their intensity as the final teams in the tournament have been at each other’s throats to cement their place in the semifinals. After all the dust settled, the final brackets have been sorted that will have a glaring omission in Astralis.
After losing to Furia in the Upper Bracket best of one, the Danes pushed past the Ninjas in Pyjamas with a convincing 2-0 scoreline, eventually earning their rematch with the Brazilians on June 7.
Astralis is typically known for putting opponents in a stranglehold, but that wasn’t the case as they simply got outclassed by the up-and-coming Brazilian team Furia.
While Astralis were able to get a commanding 14-5 lead on Inferno, they were almost overcome by a sudden resurgency led by Furia’s Yuri ‘yuurih’ Santos as they closed the gap 12-14.
The Danes did manage to close out the first map just two rounds later, but the narrow victory gave Brazilian coach and Furia hype-man Nicholas ‘guerri’ Nogueira a lot to build on.
Next map in line for the heated contest was Mirage, where Furia came out of the gates running going up 5-0, until Astralis found their footing midway through the half ending 7-8.
Astralis’s T-side was starting to pick up steam on the second half of the map, but their small string of wins was emphatically shut down by Furia in a seven-round streak to close out the map and tying up the series 1-1.
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With everything on the line for a side who aren’t familiar with desperation in big matches, Astralis recalibrated after a jarring loss on Mirage.
The final map started off like a sparring match between two titans as the teams were trading blows in the first eight rounds before Astralis managed to reassert their winning ways ending their CT-side 9-6.
Upon switching sides, Astralis got the first step over their opponents but Furia made sure not to give them much to smile about putting together yet another seven-round stunner before the Danes could answer.
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Even though the scoreline stayed tight, all the momentum was on the backs of Furia as guerri didn’t let up with shouts or rallying calls for his squad.
His efforts were well rewarded as the entire team picked up their share of the load in the final map, all netting double-digit kills above 15.
While Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen and Nicolai ‘device’ Reedtz put up stellar numbers in the last map, there was too much of a disparity from the rest of the Astralis team to keep up with the scorching Brazilians.
With an Astralis loss, that now means the Danes will be watching from the sidelines as the rest of ECS Finals move forward. Meanwhile Furia now earned the right to play against North in the semifinals on June 8 at 2pm CEST / 5am PST.