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FaZe made up for their group stage loss to Astralis with an impressive 2-1 victory in the IEM Chengdu semifinals to maintain their 100 percent grand final appearance rate in the CS2 era.
Repeating their map pick from the group stage match, FaZe were able to close out Nuke this time before falling short on Ancient 13-5 to set up Inferno as the decider, which also turned out to be a one-sided affair, with clutch plays from rain and broky propelling the international side to victory. The Latvian AWPer was the star of the series with a 1.27 HLTV 2.0 rating, while device, still adjusting to the IGL role, bottom-fragged on Astralis.
The Danish legend gave us another monitor-punching moment when his system lagged out for a bit in a match in the last match when the game stood at 6-9 to FaZe. After the lengthy technical pause, karrigan’s men swiftly closed out the series.
Speaking with HLTV after the match, karrigan admitted that the veto process caught them by surprise. “To be honest, I didn’t expect Inferno to come through. I think we expected Mirage, the same veto, but I guess our Mirage has been looking good lately, so they wanted to try to throw a curveball,” he said of the decider map.
Speaking about the team’s overall performance, karrigan said, “I think it will be good for the team to come over the hurdle, but if you don’t win, it is a part of the game. We can be proud of the consistency we show, and nobody can take that away from us, so we just need to finish the job and come 100% tomorrow to finish the trophy.”
FaZe Clan will play against MOUZ on April 14 to arrest their streak of four consecutive runner-up finishes in CS2, a run that included IEM Katowice 2024 and the PGL Copenhagen Major.
