Cover-Credits:
ESL | Adela Sznajder
Southeast Asia’s last ray of hope at the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022 has been extinguished. Fnatic fell to OG 1-2 after one of the most hotly contested matches at the tournaments, where both teams traded blows with each other with the European team finally emerging on top after a grueling 64-minute battle in the third and deciding game of the series.
Despite the early exit, Fnatic go back with 240 Dota Pro Circuit points from this event which pushes their overall tally to 720, comfortably placing it amongst the Top 12 teams who are set to receive a direct invite to The International 11. They have the most number of DPC points amongst the SEA teams currently competing in the DPC 2021/22 season.
OG crushes Fnatic’s Stockholm Major hopes
OG showcased why it finished on top of the Western European DPC 2021/22 Tour 2 with an incredible start to the series. In the first game, OG dominated the first game winning all three lanes and getting both Bozhidar "bzm" Bogdanov and Artem "Yuragi" Golubiev to good starts to their games.OG got the networth lead 3 minutes into Game 1 and it only just kept increasing from that point on, with Fnatic being unable to make any positive moves on the map, allowing OG to secure an easy 1-0 lead in the series.
Game 2 proved to be a different story with Fnatic opting to pick up an unorthodox Earth Spirit for Anucha "Jabz" Jirawong which proved to be the key to allow its lineup to scale. Marc Polo Luis "Raven" Fausto was the key beneficiary of this space as he utilized it to farm up an arsenal of items and overwhelmed OG with his sheer net worth, evening out the series.
Fnatic got off to a hot start in Game 3 and looked like they were cruising to victory after killing OG’s cores one after the other, even leading the kill charts 20-1 at one point. But OG turned it around with its big teamfight ultimates on Tommy "Taiga" Le’s Enigma and Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf’s Tidehunter with the “OG” chants echoing across the arena.
Fnatic simply couldn’t match up to OG’s overwhelming teamfight and ended up conceding the third game and the series.
Following the victory, ATF all-chatted “lol bro, write next time ))))” after he was on the receiving end of multiple offensive tips and a “lol” in all chat from Jabz in the early game when it looked like Fnatic were cruising to victory.
Valve
OG will now face Thunder Awaken in its next series. It will be interesting to see if the team continues to surge with the crowd behind their backs and move on to the next round.
