Vitality sweep Sprout to advance to ESL One Cologne Europe semifinals

Vitality beat Sprout 2-0 today in ESL One Cologne Europe’s quarterfinals.

With this result, the French CS:GO team have put an end to Sprout’s Cinderella run. Sprout upset two teams during the tournament, their fellow Germans on BIG during the opening round and OG. During those matches, Sprout’s in-game leader Timo “Spiidi” Richter showed an unknown tactical prowess, especially against OG, when Sprout won 13 consecutive rounds on their T-side on Nuke.

ZywOo, the best CS:GO player in 2019, had one of his best performances of 2020 today. The 19-year-old prodigy finished both maps—Vertigo (16-6) and Mirage (16-8)—with 26 frags, which resulted in a 1.66 average rating across the series. ZywOo died only 23 times in 46 rounds, which shows how dominant he was against Sprout.

Aside from ZywOo, all of the other Vitality players added clips to the team’s highlight reel. The newcomer Kévin “misutaaa” Rabier saved one round for Vitality on Vertigo with a beautiful quad-kill.

Heading into the semifinals, Vitality may face the only team that’s beaten them at ESL One Cologne Europe: Astralis. The Danes will play against Ninjas in Pyjamas tomorrow and the winner will face Vitality on Saturday, Aug. 28 at 11:30am CT. Aside from the loss to Astralis, Vitality have defeated all of their adversaries—Heretics, FaZe, and Sprout—2-0.

Vitality nearly won ESL One Cologne last year but lost to Team Liquid in the grand finals. This year, with BIG out of the picture, ZywOo and crew are the best-ranked team that’s still alive in the competition.