FURIA & G2 start ESL Pro League S13 playoffs with victories

FURIA and G2 won their first-round matches of the ESL Pro League Season 13 playoffs. The Brazilian grande have dealt with FunPlus Phoenix 2-1 (14:16 on Nuke, 16:7 on Vertigo, 16:11 on Inferno), and after that Nemanja "nexa" Isakovic's have beaten Team Liquid (11:16 on Dust2, 16:12 on Vertigo, 16:14 on Inferno).

Most likely the match against FURIA was the final destination in Miikka "⁠suNny⁠" Kemppi's journey with FunPlus Phoenix, due to the fact that his practice with the team has been lacking in quantity and quality because of the Finnish player's health problems, as Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk revealed in recent HLTV confirmed. The team is aiming for the Netherlands veteran Chris "chrisJ" de Jong who they have some successful experience with.

The next series has displayed an absolutely different level of Counter-Strike with plenty of highlights and impressive tactics in the bag of each contestant. Teams required all 30 rounds on the last map to determine the winner of the rivalry with Liquid nearly managing to take it to the overtimes with the efforts of 1-shot NAF who made 4 kills but eventually got defeated by the game timer.

FPX and Liquid finish in 9th-12th place, while FURIA and G2 advance to the next round of the Single Elimination grid, where they will face each other on April 4.

"I think we're going to play better than we did today," NiKo said. "This was a really important win for our confidence. We won all pistols, but the games weren't really convincing.

"We feel confident going up against FURIA, I think we've figured out how they approach the games and we know how to counter it. They've probably improved with junior since they've had a lot of time. It should be a good one."

Playoffs bracket: