Mere hours following a drastic roster move, one of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive‘s most legendary teams successfully qualified for one of the biggest events of the year.
Fnatic, which yesterday announced the return of two of its most veteran players in Robin “flusha” Rönnquist and Jesper “jw” Wecksell, successfully qualified for next month’s $250,000 IEM Katowice tournament.
Fnatic’s run through the qualifier began with a 2-1 victory over mousesports, where jw in particular showed no signs of rust or discomfort, as he topped the scoreboard on the final two maps of the series. This in turn became a trend for the remainder of Fnatic’s matches in the qualifier, as both flusha and jw would consistently prove to be invaluable for the Fnatic side.
In the evening’s last match, Fnatic would once again perform above expectations, as the Swedish roster took down the recently assembled French “super team” of G2 Esports. Consisting primarily of the former EnVyUs-trio consisting of Nathan “NBK” Schmitt, Dan “apEX” Madesclaire and Kenny “kennyS” Schrub, the super team was unable to withstand Fnatic’s onslaught, and fell in both maps of the series.
Having won the battle of the shuffles, Fnatic COO Patrik “cArn” Sattermon took a shot at his opposite numbers on Twitter.
Although this iteration of Fnatic could be considered a reunion of its most successful roster ever, the manner in which the squad won both of its series last night is still nothing short of impressive. Neither jw or flusha have competed with Fnatic since August, 2016, following an ill-fated roster shuffle where Fnatic saw flusha, jw and Freddy “krimz” Johansson depart the squad in order to join its Swedish rivals GODSENT.
The qualifier was less successful for GODSENT, who crashed out early after losses to Tricked and Mousesports.
Fnatic are the first of four teams to reach IEM Katowice through the qualifier, with the remaining three decided later today. They will join invited sides, Astralis, Cloud9, FaZe Clan, Ninjas in Pyjamas, North, OpTic, SK Gaming and Virtus Pro.
