Team Liquid knock MOUZ out of ESL Pro League season 16, secure top-4 finish

Team Liquid swept MOUZ 2-0 today in the first quarterfinal matchup of the ESL Pro League season 16 playoffs. The result puts the North American powerhouse in the semifinals, where they’ll face the winner of FaZe Clan vs. Cloud9, and eliminates the young European squad of MOUZ from the $823,000 competition. Liquid looked a bit shaky against Fnatic in the round of 12, leaving fans wondering whether they had what it takes to make a deep run. But today, they looked as sharp as ever and didn’t give MOUZ too much room to work with. “MOUZ is a really strong team so happy we were able to win in this fashion,” Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski said on social media after the series was done. MOUZ had a nearly perfect record during the group stage (4-1) but didn’t play like themselves today. Liquid shattered MOUZ’s defense in the first half of Inferno (11-4) playing as Terrorists, mostly due to Mareks “YEKINDAR” Gaļinskis’ successive entries on the B bombsite. They kept the energy going on the CT side once they had access to full buys to claim the map 16-10. The series moved to MOUZ’s map pick Ancient, and once again, Liquid displayed their dominance on both sides of the map to run away with a 16-11 victory after winning seven T-side rounds in the second half. YEKINDAR didn’t shine as he did on Inferno, and instead, it was the AWPer Josh “oSee” Ohm doing most of the fragging work. The North American dedicated sniper struggled throughout the group stage but is recovering his form during the playoffs, especially on Ancient, which seems to be his best map nowadays. He had a 23-15 K/D on Ancient against MOUZ and played an important part in the victory against Fnatic on the same map. The first day of the EPL season 16 quarterfinals will end with Cloud9 vs. FaZe at 12pm CT.