Astralis’ in-game leader Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander arguably made the best individual play of IEM Summer 2021 so far, but he wasn’t rewarded for his efforts.
Astralis were in a four-vs-five situation with just pistols and a Scout against FunPlus Phoenix on Ancient, the first time two top-20 CS:GO teams played against each other in an official game on the newer map, when gla1ve killed Martin “STYKO” Styk and Pavle “maden” Bošković with Desert Eagle headshots. FPX planted the bomb and almost burned gla1ve with a molly, leaving him with only seven HP. That didn’t make a difference, though, because gla1ve got headshots on Asger “farlig” Jensen and Jesse “zehN” Linjala after firing only two bullets and rushed to win the one-vs-one clutch against Luka “emi” Vuković.
The in-game leader got the final kill, completing his Desert Eagle ace. But unfortunately for him and Astralis, the bomb exploded when he was just milliseconds away from defusing it.
Gla1ve reacted as any player would in this situation and instantly put his hands behind his head when he noticed that the bomb would explode despite his best efforts. The reaction of casters Chad “SPUNJ” Burchill and Alex “Machine” Richardson was pure gold as well since they both sounded heartbreaked and yelled, “no, no, no.”
Although it was a beautiful play that could have given Astralis some confidence for the rest of the match if gla1ve defused the bomb, the point probably wouldn’t have made that much of a difference in the outcome of the match. FPX won the first half 10-5 and scored six rounds in a row in the second half to send Astralis to IEM Summer’s lower bracket.
Even though Astralis were dominated on Ancient, gla1ve can say he did his part. The in-game leader finished with 24 kills and 20 deaths, more than any other FPX player aside from zehN.
