- The European team completes Group B after they were sent to the lower bracket
- OG won the first ap of the match but were dominated in the latter two
- Vitality’s captain ZywOo and rifler Spinx emerge as the tournament’s best players
After winning three consecutive matches in the lower bracket of Group B of the IEM Rio, Vitality have secured a spot in the event’s playoffs.
Vitality Defeat OG
Vitality have emerged victorious from the lower bracket of IEM Rio’s Group B to secure the last spot for the tournament’s playoffs. The European team won three consecutive series in the group, beating the likes of FaZe and OG. The latter match was Vitality’s opportunity to enact revenge upon OG, against whom they suffered an overtime loss in the opening round.
Vitality now advanced to the quarter-finals from third place in the group. Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut’s men will now have to face Group A's second-placed team, BIG, on Friday. Meanwhile, OG are eliminated from the tournament and end it at seventh-eighth place, The team suffered a lot in the past matches, having been defeated by Cloud9, who already secured a playoff berth at the IEM Rio.
But unlike the relatively close match OG had against C9, the fight against Vitality was much more one-sided. Although the team managed to barely grab the first map, Mirage, which ended in a too-close-for-comfort 16-14, OG was not able to replicate the same thing on the following maps.
As soon as the maps changed to Inferno, Vitality took the initiative and did not let OG get into the double-digit rounds. By far the best player on Vitality’s side was the team’s captain, ZywOo, who put up a 33-12 score and a 2.31 rating. With the scoreboard reading a whopping difference of 16-5 in favor of Vitality, the match went to the third map, Overpass.
Here, the teams were more equal, but Vitality still had a significant lead against OG. This time, it was thanks to 22-year-old Lotan “Spinx” Giladi’s quick plays that granted Vitality the map and the match. The European team ended Overpass with a score of 16 rounds to OG’s 11.
ZywOo and Spinx are by far the team’s best players in the IEM Rio so far, sitting atop the charts as the two highest-rated players of the tournament. Over wight maps played, the former averaged a 1.34 rating, while the latter scored a 1.41. These skills will be put to the test as Vitality moves to the event’s playoffs, where they will face BIG from Group A.
