fnatic beat Astralis in ESL One: Road to Rio

fnatic picked up their first victory in the group stage of ESL One: Road to Rio after defeating Astralis in an exciting three-map affair.

The Swedish team recovered from Wednesday's surprise defeat to ENCE and came out on top of this Nordic classic, featuring the two highest-ranked teams in the tournament, separated by just one place in the world rankings.

The end result was the same as it had been in April 6's ESL Pro League encounter between the two teams, but fnatic could have easily wrapped things up after two maps today. They were in control from the offset and grabbed the lead in the series with a commanding performance on Train, Astralis' map pick.

Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim's troops looked poised for a 2-0 victory before Astralis recovered from a 9-14 deficit and won Inferno in overtime. Map three, Overpass, almost followed the same trend, but the Danes were denied another second-half comeback that would have seen them join Ninjas in Pyjamas at the top of Group A.

Astralis endured a sluggish start to the series despite winning the pistol round and found themselves down 2-10 on their map pick of Train. Things were starting to look desperate for the Danes, but then Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen and Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth rescued the team with key individual actions, bringing the deficit to five rounds.

Now playing on the CT side, Astralis kept themselves in the game by winning a much-needed pistol and following that up with the next round. The respite would not last long, however, as fnatic took control of proceedings once they had guns in hand, with Golden dealing the finishing blow with a 1v2 clutch on the inner site.

A trio of Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell kills in the pistol round on Inferno set fnatic up for an early lead, one that would stick almost until the mid-stage of the half. After such a dominant start, the Swedish giants suddenly ran out of steam as they began to struggle to break through the Astralis defense, with the half ending with a 9-6 lead in the Danes' favor.

Golden opened up the action in the second half with a stunning ace on the B site. fnatic enjoyed a spell of dominance after that as they controlled the tempo of the game, often catching Astralis's players off-guard with their timely flanks. Down 9-14, dug deep to force overtime, though they still had to be kicking themselves for letting fnatic hit series point with nothing but pistols - one of the many uncharacteristic mistakes made by the Danes in this game. With the momentum in their favor, Astralis recovered from a 0-1 overtime deficit and won four consecutive rounds to take the series to a third map.

Astralis grabbed an early lead on the CT side of Overpass, but the rest of the half was a nightmare experience for the Danes, who had a hard time containing the fnatic offense and struggled to close out rounds after getting into advantageous situations.

The Danish team looked a different team after the break and began to chip away at the deficit with a strong offensive display. fnatic's round victories were far and far between as Astralis seemed to be in control of proceedings, but the Swedes tightened up their defense and won three consecutive rounds to put the series to bed.