Team Liquid Team Liquid Europe Rank #5 nAts Ayaz Akhmetshin GSR Ognjen Bondžić kamo Kamil Frąckowiak trexx Nikita Cherednichenko Kicks Kimmie Laasner has secured a spot in the EMEA Stage 2 grand final after sweeping FUT Esports FUT Esports Europe Rank #8 s0pp Efe Tur xeus Doğan Gözgen yetujey Eray Budak KROSTALY Okan Alaçam sociablEE Volkan Yonal in 3-0 fashion. Tomorrow, the Liquid boys will face a dangerous Karmine Corp Karmine Corp Europe Rank #2 dos9 Zhumagali Dastan LewN Burak Alkan Avez Hazem Khaled SUYGETSU Dmitry Ilyushin N4RRATE Marshall Massey for a chance to hoist another Stage 2 trophy.

What started off as eliminating Challengers teams to stay in the running for a Champions Shanghai ticket has snowballed into a grand final appearance. Heading into playoffs, Liquid was not guaranteed a spot at Champions through points and had to rack up wins in order to eventually qualify directly to China's biggest event of the year.

Liquid steamrolls throughout Split

Team Liquid's map pick of Split saw every member step up and perform when needed. Every single one of the team's players – sans trexx – posted above a 1.30 rating. Subsequently, FUT's players failed to crack above a 1.00 due to only managing to scrape together a total of five rounds.

With purp0 leading the charge on the attacking half, Liquid managed to steal away nine rounds to set a comfortable lead ahead of its defensive half. FUT struggled to prevent its opponents from stringing together rounds in succession, leading to a major deficit.

After winning the pistol, Liquid all but guaranteed a map win and allowed FUT two more rounds before taking the lead in the best of five.

FUT flop on Ascent attack half

Despite restabilizing with a pistol win to open up its map pick of Ascent, FUT was quickly put in its place as Liquid proceeded to win every single round in the half. On defense alone, kamo collected 21 scalps on Phoenix without a single first death. His contributions to Liquid's defense kept FUT out of the game on its own map pick.

Eager to bite back against last year's Stage 2 champions, FUT converted a thrifty round into what looked like a comeback, bringing a 2-11 deficit up to 8-11 before kamo won a 1v1 against xeus to bring his team to 12.

Despite Vlad burning a timeout at match point to calm the nerves, FUT was ultimately unable to keep its composure and surrendered Ascent to Liquid 13-8.

Liquid weather Lotus to clean sweep FUT

With one final chance at regional survival in the form of Lotus, FUT began heating up – albeit too late – and kept its attacking half competitive with a modest 5-7 finish in Liquid's favor.

After Liquid cashed in on its bonus round to bring the scoreline to 5-10, FUT answered back with three rounds of its own in an attempt to stem the bleeding. The two teams exchanged rounds all the way until the score sat at 11-10, where an unfortunate unscope from s0pp at the wrong moment allowed purp0 to open up the round for his team, bringing Liquid to match and series point.

Eager to end the match, purp0 continued his terrorizing FUT all the way to the end of the map, where he eliminated his Turkish adversaries with a 4k to send his team to the grand final.

KROSTALY stepped up for FUT by dropping 17 kills in the second half, nearly triple the amount of the next best performer in s0pp. Across each map, there was a visible performance – or rather lack of – that statistically proved fatal to FUT's results.

Assistant Coach Bambino would later remark that the lack of momentum was something that greatly contributed to the team's defeat.

“We played very poorly…But what I will say is [that] I would rather have two matches like this now than two matches like this in Shanghai.”

Despite losing to Liquid, FUT will continue onwards to Champions Shanghai due to its accrued Championship Points.

Liquid will face Karmine Corp tomorrow for a chance at rekindling old glory, while the latter aims to make up for this year's performance with a regional trophy.