Fnatic outlast Imperial
The now-dexter-led International squad took on Imperial to kick off ESL Pro League Season 18 Group C, with the Black-and-Orange crew taking a close win.
Fnatic wasted no time making a strong start on Overpass. While Imperial started with a 4-0 lead, Fnatic dominated the rest of the half to close out on an 11-4 score. Mezii is seemingly loving the return to being a star as he was the driving force behind Fnatic's streak with 26 kills in the map.
Over in the second half, Fnatic hit match point early on before HEN1 and Boltz popped off with the awp-rifle duo to put Imperial into the double digits. But the initial deficit was too large to overcome and the international squad closed the map out 16-11.
The series then moved over to Fnatic's map pick of Anubis. But that decision would end up haunting the squad as they fell flat in the early rounds of their CT side allowing Imperial to take a 9-round haul. dexter and co. did stabilize towards the end to put 6 on the board, and they started the second half with a 6-round streak of their own, but Felps' performance was incredible with the Brazilian entry putting up 30 frags to send fnatic to Nuke.
The final map of the day, Nuke saw Imperial start on the T side, kicking things off with a pistol conversion. Fnatic's CT side then put up an unbreakable wall taking 9 rounds in the half. The second half started quite similarly with the squad winning the pistol and taking that up to a 13-7 lead. Imperial wasn't ready to take the opening loss and brought the CT side back into the game taking 8 rounds in the remainder of the half and pushing Fnatic to overtime.
Overtime was neck and neck throughout, Imperial started with a 2-1 half, then Fnatic brought it to a second overtime. But that's when Fnatic finished it as they swept through the second OT to take the series 2-0.
Imperialfnatic| Imperial |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Henrique 'HEN1' Teles |
84 - 66 | +18 | 91.4 | 71.9% | 1.24 |
| João 'felps' Vasconcellos |
71 - 67 | +4 | 73.7 | 71.9% | 1.12 |
| Jhonatan 'JOTA' Willian |
69 - 60 | +9 | 74.8 | 74.0% | 1.07 |
| Ricardo 'boltz' Prass |
56 - 71 | -15 | 72.1 | 75.0% | 0.98 |
| Vinicius 'VINI' Figueiredo |
53 - 63 | -10 | 64.2 | 69.8% | 0.95 |
| fnatic |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 William 'mezii' Merriman |
83 - 64 | +19 | 88.8 | 71.9% | 1.26 |
 Aurélien 'afro' Drapier |
77 - 62 | +15 | 72.6 | 67.7% | 1.15 |
 Freddy 'KRIMZ' Johansson |
70 - 64 | +6 | 83.4 | 78.1% | 1.14 |
 Fredrik 'roeJ' Jørgensen |
56 - 72 | -16 | 71.0 | 60.4% | 0.86 |
 Christopher 'dexter' Nong |
40 - 72 | -32 | 54.1 | 65.6% | 0.76 |
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