North best Vitality on two maps at Europe Minor

North are through to the upper-bracket final at the Europe Minor after defeating Vitality on Nuke (16-14) and Dust2 (16-12).

The first map played in the series was Nuke, where Vitality won their CT pistol on the back of a double and a triple-kill from Alex "⁠ALEX⁠" McMeekin and Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut, respectively. North responded with a successful CZ buy, however, and followed that up with two more rounds to take control of proceedings on their map pick.

Still, that did not stop ZywOo's troops, who, with the 18-year-old prodigy leading the way with 22 frags, went on a massive run to bag a dominant 11-4 half-time lead.

The second half began just like the first, with Vitality winning a pistol round, but failing to follow it up - this time around, North would also be able to win the first gun round.

From that moment, the landscape of the game changed drastically as the Danes rallied to the lead, and hit map-point by turning a 2v5 situation around, 15-12. Vitality still tried to take Nuke to overtime, but North managed to deny the Frenchmen, closing out the map in the last round of regulation.

Dust2 kicked off with North winning their first pistol of the series while playing on the CT side. After building up their economy, Vitality levelled the score at 2-2, eventually bagging a 5-3 lead from there.

In the next round, Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller's squad looked set to get back on the board in a 4v4 retake, but Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt denied them with a clean quad-kill that included a 1v2 clutch. Despite Vitality constantly breaking through North's defense, the Danes still managed to win two more rounds to reduce the deficit to 5-10 by half-time.

North started the second half with a three-round winning streak after Nicklas "⁠gade⁠" Gade clutched a 1v2 situation in the pistol. Vitality did not back down and responded with a convincing first gun round, which they followed up with another to go up 12-8.

However, after North broke their opponents' economy on the back of two consecutive AWP double-kills from cadiaN, Vitality were helpless to stop the Danes. The Frenchmen nearly won the 26th round, but Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså pulled a seemingly impossible 1v2 clutch, inspiring his team to seal the deal two rounds later, 16-12.