A serious contender for the Stockholm Major championship just took an early leave.
After a tight three map series, Team Vitality has knocked Astralis out of PGL Major Stockholm. Both squads were expected to go deep in the Champions stage, but 1-2 scorelines forced them to meet in the Legends phase.
Vitality’s victory was marked by an insane performance from AWPer Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut. The French side still has one more match to go before qualifying for the Champions stage. Astralis will leave Stockholm with just $17,500 from the $2 million prize pool.
All three maps in the series were hotly contested. The opening round on Nuka ended 16-10 to Vitality, but Astralis surged back on Vertigo to force a third map. Vitality carried a 10-5 scoreline into Dust_2 T half, but Astralis still managed to put up a fight. A gutsy force buy at 11-14 paid off to keep the French off map point. After recovering economically, Vitality used one last rifle buy and a frantic A take to secure a final score of 16-13.
Team Vitality and Astralis were both solid picks to perform at the Stockholm Major. Astralis made some controversial roster changes to bring Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander back into play, but the in-game leader couldn’t stop a disappointing result. Despite entering as the three-time defending major champion, Astralis will leave Stockholm with a 14th-place finish.
Team Vitality Stockholm Major roster
- Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut
- Kévin “misutaaa” Rabier
- Jayson “Kyojin” Nguyen Van
- Richard “shox” Papillon
- Dan “apEX” Madesclaire
- Alexandre “bodyy” Pianaro (Substitute)
- Rémy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam (Coach)
Young AWPer ZywOo is Vitality’s star player, a fact he reaffirmed in the series against Astralis. He averaged 92 damage and .96 kills per round and ended map three with 82 kills to 46 deaths. ZywOo is just below Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev as one of the best CSGO players in Stockholm.
Team Vitality directly qualified for the Legends stage by earning second place in the European Regional Major Rankings. The squad took unexpected losses against Virtu.spro and Heroic to force a showdown against Astralis. Vitality will now face Russian roster Entropiq to secure a spot in the Stockholm Major playoffs.
