Liquid vs Fnatic Pre-Match Preview
In a few moments, the playoff stage of ESL Pro League season 16 will start and the first match will put Liquid and Fnatic face to face. Both teams finished the group stage with three wins and two losses, showing some great Counter-Strike but failing to do it, at some point as Liquid did against Eternal Fire. Fnatic only lost to the likes of NAVI and Vitality, #2 and #10 in the HLTV world ranking respectively. This is building up to be an intense battle between two legendary tags in CS:GO.
In this series don't expect to catch sight of Nuke and Dust2 since they are the teams' permanent map bans. During the group phase, Liquid picked Mirage more than any other map, followed by Inferno and Dust2. On the European side of things, there will be either an Ancient pick or an Overpass pick.
For Liquid, the highlight of this ESL Pro League season has been Mareks "YEKINDAR" Gaļinskis and his ability to turn rounds in favor of his team. Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski has also been a synonym for consistency and quality, as ever. If Liquid want to win this match, they need Josh "oSee" Ohm to come out of the slump he has been recently on.
Fnatic want Fredrik "roeJ" Jørgensen to continue pulling the team forward as their top-fragger. The 28-year-old Dane has been on an absolute tear lately, alongside recent addition Dion "FASHR" Derksen.
Liquid need to enter the server just like they did against Cloud9 and not make the same mistakes as they did against Eternal Fire. NA's best team has what it takes to make a deep run, but it will come down to their consistency to make that true because this Fnatic roster is showing great promise, even when facing great obstacles. This will be an intense match-up and there's hope we will see some great Counter-Strike to open the playoffs.
Liquid vs Fnatic starts at 09:30AM today.
