dem0n finished the series 43-19 with 110.8 ADR, the best numbers on the server by a distance, as FUT won Liquid’s own Cache pick 13-5 and closed Dust2 13-9. Not one Liquid player ended with more kills than deaths, a day after they upset MOUZ.
Two days into PGL Masters Bucharest 2026, FUT Esports have yet to lose a map. Sunday’s 2-0 against Team Liquid took them to two wins and no losses in the Swiss stage, and the player who decided it was not the new signing everyone came to watch.
That was SunPayus, and he was good again: 32 kills to 17 deaths, after his 34-18 debut against TYLOO on Saturday. But the series belonged to dem0n. The Ukrainian rifler went 20-6 on Cache and 23-13 on Dust2, and his ADR of 110.8 was more than 27 higher than anyone else’s in the match.
FUT Esports2-0
Team LiquidStatsCache 13-5, Dust2 13-9
dem0n
Krabeni
dziugss
xfl0ud
JTSixteen kills in a half
Cache was supposed to be Liquid’s edge. It was their pick and their most played map over the past three months, with eight wins from 13, while FUT had played it once in that time. Liquid won the pistol round and then barely won anything else. FUT took the next six rounds and reached the half 9-3.
dem0n had 16 kills and 120 ADR in that half alone, with five multi-kill rounds and three wins from three opening duels. Liquid had no answer to the way FUT’s defence moved: Krabeni pushed through smokes, FUT rotated through mid while Liquid gave it up, and at one point FUT set up a double AWP that Liquid only found after losing a round to it. Liquid’s best spell came after the switch. NAF won the second pistol round with four kills, and Liquid took the round after it too, but dem0n then won the next one almost on his own with two Desert Eagle headshots. FUT closed the map 13-5.
Dust2 went the same way for most of the first half. FUT led 7-1 and Krabeni had 135.5 ADR at that stage. Liquid then won three rounds in a row, the last of them with every player taking one kill, and FUT called a timeout at 7-4. From 10-5 down in the second half, Jorko kept Liquid alive with a 1v3 clutch, and they got within two rounds at 9-11. A 1v4 with the bomb down was too much even for him, and Krabeni’s double kill against Liquid’s last force buy ended the series.
Inferno never came up
FUT also decided what Liquid would not get to play. They banned Inferno, Liquid’s best map over the past three months with seven wins in eight, and the map where JT went 26-14 against MOUZ on Saturday. Without it, the in-game leader finished this series 16-30 with 43.6 ADR and a KAST of 45%.
He was not alone. On Saturday a different Liquid player won each map against MOUZ. On Sunday the best of them was NAF on minus five, and EliGE ended 21-33. malbsMd had five kills on Cache.
JT had described the problem himself. In an interview recorded ahead of the tournament and aired by PGL after the series, he said Liquid are going through a lot of inconsistency, able to beat good teams and lose to much weaker ones. He also said the target in Bucharest is the playoffs, and that making them could help bring Liquid back to tier one events next year.
Why FUT changed AWPer
FUT’s coach coolio explained the reasoning behind the switch in another interview PGL aired between the maps. cmtry did fine early in the year, he said, but against top five teams FUT felt he was not yet at that level, and his confidence dropped when the results did not come. FUT used the time before Bucharest to hold trials and bring in a more experienced and consistent AWPer, and SunPayus was the player they chose.
Four maps in, SunPayus has 66 kills and 35 deaths. Against Liquid, for the first time, he could leave the headlines to someone else.
One more for FUT, two more for Liquid
FUT now face another team on two wins in round three, and a win there puts them in the playoffs. A loss still leaves them two more chances. In HLTV’s version of Valve’s Regional Standings, the win is worth 48 points and moves FUT from tenth to ninth.
Liquid are back on even terms at one win and one loss. They need two wins from their next three series, and a second loss in any of them ends their tournament. The defeat costs them eight points and one place in the standings, from 21st to 22nd. Before the match, HLTV’s invite simulator gave Liquid a 17.7% chance of an invite to PGL Cluj-Napoca 2027, 36.7% with a win and 12.5% with a loss.
