NAVI and MOUZ have secured their places and tickets to the ESL Pro League Season 18 Grand Finals after both sealing wins in the semifinal round in Malta on Saturday.
There was a close affair between NAVI and Monte, but it was the former who secured a 2-0 win over Monte, although Monte started well, going twelve rounds on Anubis and a 9-6 on Mirage before NAVI did a comeback on the CT side on Anubis, winning 10 rounds to one to close out the series.
In the other game, MOUZ’s win over ENCE was even tighter as the best-of-three ended 2-1, and MOUZ needed a brilliant CT half on Nuke to eventually succeed. On Mirage, MOUZ won the first map, 16-13, before ENCE won 16-11 on Vertigo. MOUZ then posted one of their beat maps by thrashing ENCE on Nuke.
The final will be an exciting context between NAVI and MOUZ with some of the best and biggest Counter-Strike’s biggest stars on display, like NAVI’s Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, and MOUZ’s in-game leader, Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek. Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek, just months ago, helped GamerLegion to the grand finals of the BLAST Paris Major.
Meanwhile, NAVI and MOUZ have both enjoyed the tournament as the former hasn’t dropped a single map, while have only dropped maps against G2 and ENCE and have not lost since the early 1-2 loss to MIBR.
There’s a $850,000 prize pool and the honor of being the last Pro League champions in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive era to be fought for by NAVI and MOUZ in the final.
Subsequent Pro League competitions will be played on the newly-released CS2, although there is no specific indication when tournament organizers will switch to the CS2. CS2 was released last week, although the release has been greeted with mixed reactions.
Daniel Ademiju Idowu
