FURIA and FalleN were all set for another finals appearance, but the youngsters on FUT stole away the veteran’s dream.
FUT defeated FURIA 2-1 at the Esports World Cup (EWC), recovering from a 4-8 deficit on the final map to win it in overtime.
Aulon ‘Krabeni’ Fazlija and company were not even competing in the tier-one circuit a year ago, much less reaching the final of a tournament featuring all the best teams in the world. Today, they spoiled FURIA’s supposedly simple path to the final and snagged the finals spot in front of their fans.
In the process, they also took away a finals appearance from Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo in the year of his retirement.
A contested affair on Ancient but a stomp on Nuke
I felt like we deserved the win, but they were just a little bit better today.
We know that Nuke is maybe our worst map at the moment, and that everyone is picking it against us.
Both FalleN and Krabeni, respectively, shared their thoughts with us after the match.
The series kicked off, somewhat unexpectedly, on Ancient, a map that FURIA have only played five times in the last year. However, Krabeni was not surprised.
Yeah, we knew they were going to let Ancient open against us, we just knew that. [FURIA] have two games, we saw how they play and for us it was pretty amazing that they will leave us [Ancient].
For FalleN, leaving Ancient open is part of FURIA’s long term plan for the season.
Because Overpass was gone, Cache was introduced, and we have more tricks under the sleeve for next competitions. It’s been working so far, I think we have been evolving good on [Ancient].
The map was an intense 13-11 win for FUT, then, FURIA won Nuke in dominant fashion, 13-6. However, Krabeni said FUT was not disheartened headed into Dust2.
We spoke and said that Nuke is our worst map, […] we knew that on Dust2 we had a big chance to win the game.
FUT ended up seizing their chance, winning the map 16-13. But it started much differently, with FURIA fully in control with an 8-4 T-side lead.
FalleN said that they let FUT back in the match by losing advantaged situations.
There were specifically situations like 4v2s, 4v3s, 5v3s that we let slip away that gave them momentum and gave them the opportunity to come back into the match.
Specifically, Nikita ‘cmtry’ Samolotov was having a fantastic map, FUT’s AWPer who came under fire from the media and was reumored to be replaced by Alvaro ‘SunPayus’ Garcis.
For me, [cmtry] is, like, the best teammate. He can go die, go first… He can do everything for the team. Like, he doesn’t play for himself at all.
FalleN is set to retire this year after a storied career across multiple Counter-Strike titles. We asked him if this felt like a missed opportunity.
No, it’s gonna feel a little bit like that because the way the third match went, like it really does feel that you let the match slip away with those rounds that I mentioned.
FalleN said he still looked forward to the rest of the season, taking positives from the event.
