A rematch of the BLAST Premier Fall finals between Astralis and Vitality will take place at IEM Global Challenge 2020.
After an intense BLAST tournament, both Vitality and Astralis have looked shaky at IEM Global Challenge. Vitality started out the tournament against BIG, where they lost in a close three-game series. This threw the French squad in a do-or-die match against Complexity, which they managed to win.
Astralis walked that same path but started out by beating Complexity convincingly in the opening match. BIG was waiting in the winners’ match, and once again, the German squad took down one of the best teams in the world. This leaves Astralis and Vitality fighting for survival against each other, just five days after their previous high-stakes showdown. This means that one of the two will start the Christmas holidays early, while the other team advances to the semifinals for a shot at $200,000.
Even though both teams have looked shaky, it seems like Vitality has what it takes to win once again. There is no doubt that Vitality is the best team in the world when playing well and not even Astralis can top that. As always, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut is the key factor for Vitality. The young AWPer has a whopping 1.31 rating over the past three months, while the top-rated player on Astralis is Nicolai “device” Reedtz at 1.19.
Astralis can still out-perform Vitality, but it requires a bigger effort from both Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen and Emil “Magisk” Reif. Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth has also looked very rusty from the break he took from competition earlier this year.
Looking at the veto, Vitality will likely have an edge as well. The French team will likely ban Train and from that point, they have a better win rate than Astralis on all maps except for Vertigo. It’s hard to pick a map where Astralis has a clear edge, so the Danes will have to dig deep.
This match could potentially be identical to the final at BLAST, where the teams played Vertigo, Dust2, and Inferno.
A match between the top two CSGO teams will always be a close one and the bookmakers agree. As the current best team in the world according to HLTV, Vitality is slightly favored to take the match. Since Vitality won the BLAST Premier Pro final against Astralis in three maps, it’s only fair that the French squad gets the favorable position.
The odds are slightly in Vitality’s favor at 1.73 to 1.97. It still seems like a match that could see three close maps, unless individuals on either team step up.
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