Vitality have locked in the final playoff berth at BLAST Open Porto after a confident 2-0 victory over FUT in Group B's lower bracket (13-7 Anubis, 13-8 Dust2).
It was the end of a recovery run for Vitality, who debuted with Justinas "jL" Lekavicius as a stand-in with a 0-2 loss to Inner Circle to end up in the lower bracket. The team rallied by beating 9z, Legacy, and FUT to secure the final playoff berth, showing more cohesion as the event wore on and outclassing FUT in the playoff decider.
FUT arrived at BLAST studios in Denmark directly after making a run to the finals of the Esports World Cup, and their lack of time to reset and practice showed as their overaggression was punished time and time again by Vitality.
Nikita "cmtry" Samolotov had one of his few highlight moments to kick off Anubis, a triple kill giving FUT enough early control — alongside a 3v5 from Dmytro "dem0n" Myroshnychenko and Džiugas "dziugss" Steponavičius — to go up 4-2. But all that work came undone as Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut turned an eco round with a 1v3 clutch, which became a turning point that allowed Vitality to tie the score at the break.
They took over once on the attack, having no trouble punishing FUT's aggressive CT tendencies between multi-fragging from jL, ZywOo, and Dan "apEX" Madesclaire as they cruised to a 13-7 finish.
Dust2 was even more one-sided as apEX continued to find high-impact kills while Vitality sat back yet again for FUT to overpeek round after round, with cmtry struggling immensely against an on-fire ZywOo as Vitality took a 9-3 lead at halftime.
FUT started to claw back after winning four rounds off the back of a pistol, but ran into a wall as back-to-back B hits out of spawn were shut down by Robin "ropz" Kool and ZywOo before Vitality closed out not long after.
Džiugas 'dziugss' SteponavičiusPast 3 months
Nikita 'cmtry' SamolotovPast 3 months
Legacy
Andrei 'arT' Piovezan
Eduardo 'dumau' Wolkmer
Bruno 'latto' Rebelatto
Vinicius 'n1ssim' Pereira
Santino 'try' Rigal
Alan 'adrrr' Riveros
Vitality
Dan 'apEX' Madesclaire
Robin 'ropz' Kool
Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut
Shahar 'flameZ' Shushan
William 'mezii' Merriman
Rémy 'XTQZZZ' Quoniam
Mathieu 'ZywOo' HerbautPast 3 months
Inner Circle
Arseniy 'cptkurtka023' Derevinskiy
Daniil 'headtr1ck' Valitov
Eduard 'zeRRoFIX' Petrovskyi
Viktor 'onic' Babii
David 'Dawy' Bibik
Dmytro 'jR' Chervak
Justinas 'jL' LekaviciusPast 3 months
Robin 'ropz' KoolPast 3 months
Dmytro 'dem0n' MyroshnychenkoPast 3 months
Dan 'apEX' MadesclairePast 3 months
9z
Maximiliano 'max' Gonzalez
Franco 'dgt' Garcia
Ignacio 'meyern' Meyer
Luciano 'luchov' Herrera
Matias 'HUASOPEEK' Ibañez Hernandez
Bruno 'BIT' Fukuda Lima
FUT
Yasin 'xfl0ud' Koç
Dmytro 'dem0n' Myroshnychenko
Aulon 'Krabeni' Fazlija
Nikita 'cmtry' Samolotov
Džiugas 'dziugss' Steponavičius
András 'coolio' Fercsák