Virtus.pro beats FaZe Clan for a spot in the ECS Week 5 finals

August 09, 2021

The Polish side secured a spot in the finals of Esports Championship Series Season 8’s European division, only one match away from the LAN finals slated to take place at the end of November.

Upsets galore

It’s surprise result after surprise result in the European division of ECS: first, VP took out mousesports (albeit a side playing with GeT_RiGhT in lieu of ropz), then Tricked took out North on the other side of the bracket. Now, the Poles continued the streak with a win over FaZe Clan in three maps, with a narrow 16-14 win on Inferno followed by a massive 16-3 loss on Mirage – an unexpected way to trade picks –, then a convincing victory on Train off the back of a 12-3 CT half.

Interestingly, all but one of VP’s players ended up with a negative K/D for the series, while the situation was exactly opposite for FaZe Clan – no doubt due to the one-sided second map of the match.

Thanks to this win, Virtus.pro will either face Fnatic or Tricked Esport in the final on October 31 – of course, the latter would mean a juicy rematch of the (somewhat contentious) V4 Future Sports Festival’s grand final from earlier this year.

Changing fortunes

Virtus.pro has, of course, undergone a complete collapse since their legendary five-man lineup fell apart, much like the Polish scene as a whole. With their second-place finish at this year’s V4 Future Sports Festival, these performances in ECS, plus a recently announced invitation to DreamHack Open Atlanta, means that fans of the legendary side had a lot more to celebrate at the tail end of 2019 than they used to for a very long time.