Extra Salt breeze past Dignitas, move on to FunSpark ULTI upper final

Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou's team will face off against FORZE in a surprising upper final matchup.

Extra Salt have advanced to the FunSpark ULTI 2020 Europe upper bracket final following a comfortable 2-0 victory over Dignitas (Vertigo 16-9, Train 16-10). Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg and company have dropped to the lower bracket, where they will take on the winner of HAVU and Virtus.pro on Friday.

The North American-South African combination have continued their impressive run through the tournament after beating BIG in the first round, in only their second match since they made the trip to Europe to take part in a series of events they had qualified for.

With the two teams sharing the same ban, Mirage, Extra Salt had the chance to take Dignitas' best map, Nuke, off the pool in the first round of vetoes and reaped the benefits of that opportunity as the Swedes were forced on one of their less favored picks.

This time that was Vertigo, which is a map where Extra Salt had won seven consecutive maps in North America — a streak that they prolonged after a convincing showing on the opener against Dignitas. Josh "⁠oSee⁠" Ohm & co. had the defense on lockdown after losing the opening three rounds and went on to secure a series lead without too much trouble after another slow start in the second half.

Extra Salt opted for Train when it came to their map choice and seemed to pick up where they left off. This time, they were the ones to start off well and used the early buffer and a big 3v5 turnaround later on to clinch a 10-5 opening half on the Terrorist side. Dignitas looked to come back in contention with a good run of their own, but consecutive triples from oSee and JT on A stopped the Swedish-Norwegian squad in their tracks as they conceded the second map 10-16.