ZywOo helps Team Vitality win ESL Pro League S16

What an epic Grand Final of a CS:GO LAN event! Team Liquid versus Team Vitality was one of the best matches we’ve seen this year and fortunately for the spectators, it turned out to be an actual best-of-five!

The two teams had had excellent results before this battle, winning against some of the world’s best competitors to reach the Grand Final of ESL Pro League Season 16. Liquid defeated Cloud9 twice, Fnatic, and MOUZ, while Vitality smashed Ninjas in Pyjamas, Fnatic, Natus Vincere, Team Spirit, Outsiders, and G2 Esports.

The Grand Final

The Grand Final of the tournament started well for Liquid, who won their map pick Inferno. The score was 16-7 and it looked as though Vitality had concentration problems. With the exception of Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, every single one of their players had a negative K-D score.

Meanwhile, Mareks “YEKINDAR” Galinskis finished with a K-D score of +5 and a rating 2.0 of 1.59. On this map, he was by far the strongest player on the server.

The second map was Dust II and the situation changed suddenly. Even though Liquid managed to keep up to some degree with their opponent in the first half, the overall score was a disaster: 7-16. Almost everyone on Liquid had a negative score. On Vitality, only Dan “apEX” Madesclaire had a modest K-D score (-1). The rest of his teammates did what they were expected to do. Emil “Magisk” Reif had the best rating 2.0: 1.38.

Arguably, the real match started after the end of the second map and Mirage was the first real map that was played. In the first half, Vitality looked very dominant and won 11 rounds. But Liquid equalized, demonstrating that their CT side was just as good as their opponent’s. In overtime, Liquid won with a score of 25-21.

After this defeat, Vitality seemed crushed. But they did not give up and on the fourth map, the score was perfectly equal once more. Except this time, Liquid were no longer able to win in overtime. The final score was 17-19.

The fifth map was clearly unexpected by Liquid because their T-side looked like a complete improvisation. They nearly lost 12 rounds on it but they got saved by a few great moments. The score was 5-10 and everyone hoped that they would prove capable of making another comeback. However, it didn’t happen. The final score was 11-16.

The MVP of the match was ZywOo, who finished with a K-D score of +50. Meanwhile, almost his entire team had negative scores. The one exception was Magisk, whose score was +4.

Header: ESL / Twitter