BLAST EU Fall Showdown: Heroic and Sangal to join Vitality and Astralis in semifinals

BLAST Premier Fall European Showdown is about to enter the semifinals stage. Only four teams are left in the race and one of them managed to upset BIG in the quarterfinals.

Sangal were ranked 175^th in March this year but now they’re ranked 34^th. Their fast rise to prominence seems to have been fully justified, at least based on what we saw in the quarterfinal match against BIG.

Sangal were one map down and then had a fantastic comeback. Strangely enough, despite winning the match, three of their players had negative K-D scores. This clearly indicates just how close the rounds were.

Results

The results of the other three quarterfinals were unsurprising. The skill difference between the teams was great enough to allow easy predictions to be made and everything happened according to what the statistics indicated.

Team Vitality defeated TYLOO with a score of 2-0. They were expected to win without losing any maps but they weren’t as dominant as the analysts had hoped. The scores were 16-12 on Inferno and 16-10 on Dust 2.

The strongest Vitality players were Emil “Magisk” Reif (1.61) and Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut (1.21). Lotan “Spinx” Giladi and Dan “apEX” Madesclaire and lower ratings for this match but did well overall. There were simply not enough frags for all the Vitality players after Magisk got 58 of them!

Astralis, despite their internal issues, managed to defeat Eternal Fire. The match was really hard and the third map needed multiple overtime sessions. Based on their quarterfinals performance, the Danes have almost no chance of winning against Vitality in the semifinals.

ECSTATIC versus Heroic ended with a 0-2 victory for the latter. The first map was close (14-16) but the second one was relatively easy for Casper “cadiaN” Moller and his crew (9-16).

Predictions for the semifinals and the Grand Final

The semifinals of BLAST Premier Fall European Showdown should be easy to win for Vitality and Heroic. Once again, the matches look extremely one-sided and the best-of-three format leaves little room for an upset.

If everything goes according to plan, Vitality will encounter Heroic in the Grand Final for a chance to qualify for Fall Finals. This is a $425.000 event scheduled to take place right after the end of IEM Rio Major, so the two sides probably don’t want to miss it.

Heroic need this victory much more than Vitality because right now, they’re only ranked 11th within the BLAST Premier circuit, and only eight teams will get the opportunity to play in the World Final. Vitality are already qualified for that $1 million tournament thanks to the victory they got at ESL Pro League Season 16.

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