In a match between the last two teams to debut at Champions Shanghai, the EMEA third seed FUT Esports FUT Esports Europe Rank #8 s0pp Efe Tur xeus Doğan Gözgen yetujey Eray Budak KROSTALY Okan Alaçam sociablEE Volkan Yonal defeated the China second seed JD Gaming JD Gaming China Rank #7 jkuro Yong Haochong (杨浩聪) zhe Niu Zhe (牛哲) Yuicaw Huang Yung-chieh (黃湧傑) crownfisher Li Ao (李翱) BerLIN Zhang Bolin (張柏霖) in a swift 2-0.

The series began on FUT's pick of Ascent. Both teams maintained the compositions they had previously used during Stage 2, with FUT fielding a standard Jett-Phoenix lineup versus JDG's more unorthodox Deadlock-Cypher.

The map was utter domination from FUT as a fast 4K from KROSTALY in the pistol round snowballed into a 12-0 defense; between s0pp 's Operator and yetujey 's Cypher setups, JDG were unable to find a single opening around the map. A JDG pistol win staved off the threat of a 13-0, but an audacious s0pp 4K in the eco round immediately after made it a 13-1. s0pp and KROSTALY finished at the top of the scoreboard with 20 and 17 kills respectively.

JDG's pick of Summit was a closer affair. Bouncing back from the first map, JDG took control early on, converting the bonus and finding a 5-1 start largely off the back of entries from jkuro on Waylay. The half ended 8-4 in favor of JDG after Yuicaw and KROSTALY traded 1v2 clutches in rounds 10 and 12.

FUT swiftly closed the gap with a pistol and a bonus of their own, drawing the score to 8-8. From 9-9 onwards, the Turkish squad stormed towards the finish line, winning four of the last five rounds to win 13-10. The Neon-Phoenix duo of s0pp and xeus paved the way with a combined 44 kills in the map; s0pp ended the series with a cumulative 41/23/5 KDA and 11 first bloods.

From the Press Room

JDG BerLIN on how the team adjusted after losing map one: “We have gone through this moment, sometimes we have bad momentum [coming] into the game and we can adjust…we are not [the] kind of team that would be affected…by the scores, and those scores won't disappoint us too much. And as for map two, I think we started to play our playstyle, but coming into the defense side there [were] some issues that [were] unsolved. So basically, we won't be really affected by the scores...but I think we still have some issues to fix in the future.”

FUT yetujey on the team recovering their momentum coming into Champions with a win: “We had a good start for Stage 2, but it was rocky at the end…but I think that we definitely deserve Champions, we managed to catch the momentum and we had a good start as well. We were hoping for the second map to be the same as the first one…we couldn't really find any solutions to their defense…but we really played a great attack round and we managed to grab the momentum.”

Up Next

With this result, all four of China's representatives now face the possibility of early elimination. JDG will play for their tournament lives versus T1 T1 Korea Rank #2 stax Kim Gu-taek (김구택) BuZz Yu Byeong-cheol (유병철) iZu Ham Woo-ju (함우주) Munchkin Byeon Sang-beom (변상범) on Friday, Oct. 2, while FUT will challenge 100 Thieves 100 Thieves North America Rank #1 Cryocells Matthew Panganiban Asuna Peter Mazuryk vora Jordan Pulwer Timotino Timothée Lavigne Dupont bang Sean Bezerra in the winner's match on Wednesday, Sept. 30.