- Vitality becomes the first team to earn a spot at the event’s Champions stage
- They defeated Monte on two hard-fought Anubis and Nuke
- Monte are now relegated to the 2:1 bracket to stay alive in the tournament
Monte gave a hard time for Vitality at the first match to decide the participants of the final Champions stage of the BLAST Paris Major.
Vitality Defeat Monte
We are slowly entering the final stage of the last ever BLAST Premier Major played on CS:GO. The mixed European roster of Vitality became the first squad to earn a spot in the tournament’s playoffs after defeating the Ukrainian majority team Monte in a strenuous 2-0 battle.
The victory is further important for Vitality’s Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and Dan “apEX” Madesclaire because the two Frenchmen will be playing in front of the home crowd in the Accor Arena. “It feels amazing, I'm not going to lie,” apEX said in a post-match interview. He explained that he felt under a lot of pressure during the first stages of the tournament, but with the support of the fans, the team succeeded “Best-of-ones are really tough and on top of that, we are playing on home soil, and all of those things… the fans are waiting for us. There was a lot of pressure but we handled it really well.”
Here’s How the Match Went
Despite Vitality eventually winning, Monte were not planning to make it easy for them. The Ukrainian team enjoyed a hot start on their Anubis pick, kicking off the best-of-three match with a 5-1 start on the CT-side. However, by the time the sides switched, Vitality had managed to get a small lead of one round, ending the first half of the map with an 8-7 sore.
The French team kept this momentum once the sides switched, quickly racking up kills and rounds, getting dangerously close to victory 14-8. Monte finally responded with two rounds, but their efforts were en vain as but a clean 1vs4 clutch from Emil “Magisk” Reif in round 25 sealed the deal and ended the match in a 16-10 advantage to Vitality.
Nuke, the second map, proved to be a more difficult one for the European team. Despite Vitality going into the map with a seven-winning streak over the past three months, Monte proved to be a tough opponent, forcing both teams to trade rounds for the first half. Vitality eventually managed to get ahead with a comfortable 10-5 lead, but Monte turned up the heat in the second half, overturning their opponent’s three-round spree with a whopping eight-round streak.
However, the Ukrainian-majority team was not able to keep up the pressure when it mattered the most, allowing Vitality, in large part thanks to Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen, to retake the initiative and end the map with a 16-13 score.
It’s not over yet for Monte, however, as the team still has a chance to stay alive n the tournament, but will have to face Natus Vincere in the 2:1 bracket.
