Natus Vincere and ENCE advanced to the final four of the PGL Major Antwerp in Belgium by winning their Champions Stage quarterfinal matchups on Friday.
Natus Vincere defeated Heroic 2-1 to maintain its perfect record in the major, while ENCE defeated Copenhagen Flames 2-0. They were joined in the semifinals by Team Spirit and FaZe Clan, while Heroic and the Flames, despite having the skill set to surprise, were eliminated.
Majors are again becoming a battleground for the known behemoths and favourites such as FaZe and NAVI, even still, seeing ENCE and Spirit in the semifinals is a nice change. Antwerps Sportpaleis will be bursting with roars in the next two days.
What happened? Recap & predictions
On Thursday, Team Spirit defeated FURIA Esports in the quarterfinals of the PGL Major Antwerp 2022. The Russian team's surprise run at the Antwerp major continues with a 2-0 victory.
Now they advanced to the PGL Major Antwerp semifinals with the victory. They'll take on tournament favourites FaZe Clan. Toppling FaZe will be the most difficult test yet for Spirit, the surprising underdogs of Antwerp.
"We will give it our all," Spirit's Robert "Patsi" Isyanov remarked of their encounter with FaZe.
The 18-year-old rifler has been one of the team's finest players, but it was his teammates who stood up against FURIA. Another teenager, 19-year-old Pavel "s1ren" Ogloblin, shone in the quarterfinals.
NaVi got defeated on Inferno 16-10, the first map thus giving Heroic hope for an upset. However, NaVi managed to squeak out a 16-14 win on Ancient to tie the game and then won the decider map, Nuke, 16-8.
| Also Read | NAVI's PGL Antwerp Journey |
Denis "electroNic" Sharipov of Russia led NaVi with 75 kills and a plus-23 kills-to-deaths ratio, both game highs. With 60 kills, Martin "stavn" Lund lead the all-Danish Heroic squad.
To defeat Copenhagen, ENCE won 16-10 on Vertigo and 16-12 on Nuke.
Lotan "Spinx" Giladi of Israel led the team with 50 kills and a plus-22. Denmark's Jakob "jabbi" Nygaard led the Flames with 41 kills. It was a worthy end for such a new and highly skilled team.
| Also Read | Who are the Copenhagen Flames? |
If there aren’t any last minute surprises which at this minute we don’t think it will since the engines are warmed up and running at high gear, we could expect a final showdown between the tournament favourites FaZe and NAVI.
Schedule & betting odds
Saturday sees the continuation of the Champions Stage with two best-of-three semifinal matches.
Below are the current predictions for the upcoming matches. Teams that are highlighted in bold have the odds in their favour. You can click on the dates to take yourself directly to the detailed match page, and live bet whilst the matches play out.
You can always visit luckbox.com to watch your favourite team’s matches and bet live.
- Spirit vs. FaZe (May 21, 2022 - 16:30 CEST) 3.00 vs.1.30
- ENCE vs. NAVI (May 21, 2022 - 20:00 CEST) 2.70 vs. 1.47
