Na’Vi and Vitality dominate ESL Pro League S16 group A

The second day of ESL Pro League S16 is over and two teams continue to dominate group A. Both Natus Vincere and Team Vitality won their first two matches and will likely finish the group ahead of everyone else.

Fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas put up a good fight, but they still lost in the end to their better-equipped rivals.

Natus Vincere vs. Fnatic

This was the second match of the day and it started with a shocking victory in favor of Fnatic. The Swedes were down five rounds at halftime but somehow managed to make a spectacular comeback on Ancient.

Na’Vi didn’t play badly. In fact, almost everyone had a positive K-D score. But Fnatic were just a bit better on the CT side. The final score on this map was 14-16 in favor of Fnatic.

But then came Na’Vi’s map pick, Mirage. And this time, Fnatic got crushed in the first half and then could not make a comeback in the second half. The final score was 16-8 and Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev finished with a K-D score of +14. His ADR was 99.8, which is phenomenal.

On map three, Inferno, Na’Vi ended the battle in the first half again, leading Fnatic 11-4. It was clear from the start that the Swedes wanted to neutralize s1mple as much as possible. And they succeeded, making him finish with the worst score on his team. But that meant that everyone else was free to execute Na’Vi’s plan to perfection.

The final score on the third map was 16-7.

NiP vs. Vitality

Ahead of the tournament, this match looked great on paper because the two teams had met each other multiple times in 2022, with varying results. But after the loss registered by NiP against Fnatic on the first day of the competition, everyone knew that something was wrong.

Vitality started the match as the clear favorites and came close to ending it very quickly. But, luckily for the audience, NiP had a brief moment of greatness, when you came back from a score of 3-12 and nearly sent the first map into overtime. Vitality still won in the end, thanks largely to their tactical brilliance and Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut’s prowess.

The French player would go on to finish the match with a K-D record of +21 and a rating 2.0 of 1.47, by far the highest on the server.

After losing their own map pick, NiP fought hard on map two but didn’t have a plan for dealing with Vitality’s CT side. The first half finished 7-8 but the second half was a disaster: 1-8. Overall, Vitality won 16-8 and will probably continue to win until they encounter Natus Vincere. The match is scheduled for Saturday, September 3.

Header: ESL