Astralis loses to Fnatic after some huge mistakes in Road to Rio EU

Astralis is among the best Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams in the world. At their absolute worst, they’re still very close to the top. They do still make mistakes, though. 

Astralis went 1-1 in the first week of the Road to Rio: Europe group stage, beating Complexity Gaming while dropping a series to Fnatic. Though Fnatic is typically crisp, the series between Astralis and Fnatic turned on a few apparent misplays by the Danish squad.

The most egregious example of this came on the second map, Inferno. Early on in the second half Astralis brute forced its way onto the B bombsite, winning the necessary duels and getting everything set up for a bomb plant. 

The problem? They left the bomb near their spawn.

That slip-up was huge, as it allowed Fnatic to put together a winning streak that unraveled an enormous Astralis lead. Though Astralis managed to steal the win back in overtime, it still forced them to burn a lot of mental energy that could have served them well on third map Overpass.

After falling behind early on map three, Emil “Magisk” Reif found himself on the bad end of a crafty double molotov play by Fnatic. This prompted him to spray the ground after soaking up 82 points of damage:

Alongside these stumbles were dropped rounds and lost leads. The Astralis players acknowledged their frustration on Twitter:

Astralis still has plenty of CSGO left to play on the Road to Rio. They’ll next face Team Vitality on April 28.