M80 lose hard-fought series v. FUT in ESL Pro League S23 debut

FUT were able to grind out a 2-1 win v. the North Americans in either team's first match at ESL Pro League.

M80 started with a 1-0 lead but were reverse-swept by the former NAVI Academy core.

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M80 started the series with the map pool's newest addition, Anubis. M80 and FUT went back-and-forth at the start, with FUT up 4-2 at the halfway point of the first half. M80 went flawless from there, taking an 8-4 lead after their CT side. M80's buffer was just about enough, as FUT cut the lead down to 10-9 before M80 won the map 13-10

The second map, Mirage, signalled the beginning of the end for M80. FUT began the map by winning eight of the first nine rounds before the NA side secured a 4-8 first half. M80 only secured one round in the second half and fell 13-5 in the second map.

The decider was Ancient, where M80 started with a 3-0 lead, but the good times ended there. FUT took eight out of nine rounds again to hold another 8-4 lead at halftime. The second half was groundhog's day all over again, as FUT surrendered a single round in the second half to take the final map 13-5.

Džiugas "dziugss" Steponavičius and Laurențiu "lauNX" Țârlea led the way for FUT, with 48 and 52 frags, respectively, in the three map series.

ESL Pro League Season 23 Stage 1

Bo3

FUT

2 - 1

M80

All maps

FUT	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating 3.0
Džiugas 'dziugss' Steponavičius	48 - 34	+14	86.7	79.7%	1.31
Laurențiu 'lauNX' Țârlea	52 - 34	+18	87.9	84.7%	1.27
Dmytro 'dem0n' Myroshnychenko	42 - 29	+13	72.5	78.0%	1.24
Nikita 'cmtry' Samolotov	32 - 30	+2	66.7	74.6%	1.07
Aulon 'Krabeni' Fazlija	42 - 38	+4	72.3	69.5%	1.02

M80	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating 3.0
Michael 'Swisher' Schmid	38 - 43	-5	77.8	64.4%	1.07
Fritz 'slaxz-' Dietrich	35 - 41	-6	66.0	55.9%	0.93
Mason 'Lake' Sanderson	35 - 47	-12	72.7	69.5%	0.90
Elias 's1n' Stein	29 - 40	-11	51.6	61.0%	0.90
Josh 'JBa' Barutt	26 - 45	-19	54.1	59.3%	0.64