Two underdog teams faced off against behemoths in day three, however only one succeeded.
The final two matches in the round of 16 ended with yet another upset result as Vitality was knocked out.
Heroic started off the day with a fairly predictably dominant result as they swept the Portugese team, SAW, 2-0. Still riding the high from their EPL Championship win, Heroic lost only 8 rounds over the 2 map series. Map one, Vertigo, ended 16-4 as Rene “TeSeS” Madsen had an incredible 19 kill game with a 111 ADR.
Heroic closed out the series on Train, 16-6, as all members of the Danish squad finished with a higher rating than the entire SAW roster. Given Heroic’s incredible performance over the past month, Vitality’s upset have given them a relatively easy path to semi finals given they maintain this level of play.
Vitality certainly entered this matchup on unsteady footing as just after cutting Nabil “Nivera” Benrlithom, Cedric “RpK” Guipouy announced that he would soon be leaving the roster. RpK had a rather lackluster final series with Vitality, as their upset defeat embodied the consistency issues the French squad had spent the first part of 2021 grappling with.
Though as much as Vitality underperformed, 9Z certainly had one of their best days. Santino “try” Rigal led the leaderboards with 72 kills and 102.4 ADR. Moving on to face Heroic, 9Z will have another chance to upset a giant, however one that has adversely spent a majority of their year winning and contending for titles.
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