- Fnatic loses their chance to participate in CS:GO PGL Stockholm Major
- The team suffers devastating losses to FaZe clan and Team Fiend
- Recent changes to the Swedish roster might be partially to blame for their failure
Fnatic drops out of the IEM Fall Europe after a 0-5/1-4 performance in Group D of the event.
Fnatic’s Disastrous Performance
Fnatic showed poor results at the IEM Fall Europe, being mathematically eliminated following a 0-5/1-4 performance. This means the team will not be able to compete in the upcoming CS:GO PGL Stockholm Major following a 0-5/1-4 performance, which is scheduled for later this October.
In the group stage, Fnatic played only the best-of-one series, which got off to a bad start after a loss to FaZe Clan on Mirage. After this followed close losses to and Team Fiend and Double Poney on Inferno and Nuke, respectively.
The team was 0-3 and needed to win both of their last matches and get some more points in other results in order to reach playoffs. However, Fnatic suffered a defeat to NiP on Nuke, which hammered in the final nail in the coffin. The team entered the last day of the competition already eliminated and suffered an overtime defeat to SKADE on Mirage and finished 0-5.
What Caused Fnatic’s Fall?
Fnatic has had a difficult year that has seemingly only continued to spiral downward. Jesper “JW” Wecksell and Maikil “Golden” Selim, both long-standing members of the CS:GO roster, was placed to watch from the sidelines for some time and then eventually removed from the roster altogether. Two new unproven members from Cloud9’s CS:GO project came in to take their place, by the name of ALEX and mezii, both players from the United Kingdom.
IEM Fall marks the team’s harshest failure to date with the group stage seeing the previously mentioned upsets. Perhaps one could make the case for a difference in skill between the new players and the veterans. There is also the fact that up until now Fnatic’s roster consisted only of players from Sweden, so perhaps the addition of two UK players might have introduced communication issues.
This failure marks the second time in a row that Fnatic will miss a major. Fnatic has always been a big name in CS:GO so their absence at PGL Stockholm will be severely felt.
