After finally notching the elusive international championship crown, Boaster and Fnatic head back to EMEA to win their regional league.
Fnatic’s success in the international LAN stage has been noted by oddsmakers such as Pinnacle as the online bookmaker has them winning VCT EMEA with 2.47 odds. Navi meanwhile is right by their tail with odds of 2.71.
※ Current Odds Date & Time: March 17th, 12:00 A.M. (EST)
Navi will certainly want revenge against this Fnatic squad that eliminated them in VCT LOCK IN held in Brazil. Navi ended their run during the semi-finals where they were destroyed by Fnatic in three straight maps. The Ukrainian organization signed the old FunPlus Phoenix into their roster apart from ardiis, who opted to join G2 Esports in the American league. cNed took his place as the team’s duelists while ANGE1 retained his igl duties from FPX with an almost identical roster.
Fnatic has gone through several roster changes and it seems like they finally found the perfect 5-man line up as they have finally won an international championship in winning VCT LOCK IN. This marks as the first international win in VALORANT for the storied organization and is surely a big thing for players Boaster and Derke, who were the only ones left on the team’s original roster. The team reinforced their squad with Leo from Guild Esports who, despite the lack of achievements both regionally and internationally, has proven himself to be quite formidable.
Also joining their ranks is Chronicle from the championship winning team Gambit Esports. Winning in Sao Paulo made Chronicle the first ever VALORANT player to win two international trophies and he did it on two different teams over a year apart from each other. The team won after a 3-11 comeback in game 5 of the tournament against LOUD who were playing on their home soil. They did the 8-round comeback on the attacking side of Icebox which has been basically the home court of Fnatic. Notably, it is also one of the stronger maps of Gambit where Chronicle played before.
The hype surrounding Team Liquid has certainly died down after a shocking upset against the Filipino roster of Team Secret. The VCT EMEA league can be the perfect stage for them to prove their new roster. The team has Nats and Redgar, who have played with Chronicle in Gambit Esports. IGL Jamppi, who used to be a CS:GO superstar, will have a lot of tools to play with and can certainly pull something spectacular despite losing superstar Scream and his brother Nivera, who signed with Team Heretics during the off-season.
Can Fnatic imitate their success and continue on their run? Or will they fall to their regional foes?
