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Evil Geniuses face FUT esports today for Valorant Champions 2023 playoffs qualification
The day two of Valorant Champions 2023 featured the opening games of Group B. Group B is supposedly the easiest group with Evil geniuses deemed the best team of the group. The community had EG winning the group with either FUT or T1 qualifying as the second team. The opening games featured T1 taking on FUT Esports followed by Evil Geniuses taking on FPX.
A Revenge in making:
Starting with FUT Esports vc. T1, we witnessed the Turkish Valorant overcome the Korean might with little effort. The game started with Pearl, with FUT displaying a masterclass in retakes. With their dextrous retakes, FUT esports annihilated T1 and secured a 13-4 win on the first map. When asked about the retakes and if they are a result of set protocols or team’s cohesion, FUT’s coach Gais said
“On Haven it was definitely our preparation coming to fruition but on Pearl it was impromptu, So sometime we succeed sometimes we don’t and even if we get 50% of those rounds, we consider it a success”
FUT followed up the Pearl win with a win on Haven to get one step closer to the playoff qualification.
Their next opponent was decided after the EG-FPX game. During the press conference MrFaliN was asked about who’d he rather face next and he replied
“I want to play EG again but it is going to be a tough match for us like Tokyo. But I don’t know I just want to exact revenge on them for the Tokyo loss”
Underperforming on the big stage:
FUT definitely played extremely well but a lot of rounds came down to individual mistakes from T1. Commenting on the team’s performance, T1 Autumn said
“Today wasn’t really about the confidence, the aim or the nerves, I guess we should’ve prepared a lot more. Additionally, FUT performed way better than we expected.”
T1’s next game is an elimination game, when the coach was asked about the opponent for the game, he says
“We really need to address the issues we saw in today’s game. If we don’t do that, if we don’t fix that, it’s going to be a tough match whoever we face in the elimination match. I really feel like we need to focus on ourselves and our problems at this moment.”
Challenging the Goliath:
In the elimination game, T1 will take on FPX, the third seed from China. FPX lost to Evil Geniuses in the game following the T1 loss. In the game, FunPlus Phoenix came as the underdogs. As mentioned before, they saw this tournament as a learning experience and they displayed their resilience against EG. Despite EG being the top contender at Valorant Champions, FPX pushed them to the limit.
FPX managed to mount a comeback against EG twice but could not close it. A big part of the loss was the three pistol round losses out of four rounds. On the pistol loss, FPX NaThanD comments
“Yeah definitely it was part of the reason why we couldn’t close. The pistol rounds started well but we made minor mistakes and that lead to the round loss”
Talking about the team’s mistake, coach NaThanD said:
“The main mistakes we made were during the rounds we had a man advantage but couldn’t close. I feel that was the main mistake made today”
FPX will now face T1 in an elimination game. About the upcoming fixture and the pressure, FPX’s BerLIN said “I must say there is no pressure on our shoulders. T1 has played in the International tournament multiple times, so we can watch their games and that can be our opportunity, our advantage for the next game. I must say against EG today, all my teammates had decent performances but I didn’t perform well.”
Standing tall:
Despite FPX’s strong resilience, EG came out on top. They kicked off yet another International tournament with a dominant performance.
The win cemented the team’s status as the contenders at the Valorant Champions 2023. While EG did win both the maps, they had troubles closing both the maps. Upon being asked if that would be a problem in the later stages of the game, EG Boostio said
“No I don’t think so. It was just a little bit of nerves, a little bit of not playing up to our standard and as the tournament goes on, I know we will get more comfy, I know we will start owning again. Just a little bit unlucky, we just have to pull it together and we’d be fine”
A big hurdle for the EG during the upcoming event might be map pool issues. During VCT Masters Tokyo, EG dominated on Fracture. Being cautious, teams might ban fracture against EG. When asked about if they thought about this, EG’s coach Potter said
“I did, we did prepare for Valorant Champions with the fracture ban in mind. One of the discussions, a few weeks ago, leading up to this event was fracture. It was a big question for us, would we get a nice little ego stroke on day 1, are they gonna ban Fracture on us and actually we were pretty torned, some of the squad didn’t think they would. It’s nice, it opens up our veto even more moving forward. I don’t think most teams would ban fracture, I don’t think most teams can afford to do that. So we’ll probably be playing fracture in this tournament. But it is nice to see opponents banning the map”
Evil Geniuses will face FUT esports in the qualification game today. EG once again would be the favored team and are expected to qualify without much problems. The Valorant action continues in Los Angeles. For more updates on Valorant Champions 2023, follow Valorant Champions tour Twitter.
Credits: Riot Games // Valorant Champions Tour.
