FaZe beat FURIA to set up ENCE grand final

The European team has reached their second grand final in a row with their win against FURIA.

FaZe became the second finalists of ESL Pro League Season 15 after they beat FURIA in a comeback-filled series that the European team managed to close out in two maps.

This is the second big event final that FaZe have made, as they won IEM Katowice 2022 earlier this year, where they were forced to use Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage as a stand-in for Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool and Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard during the tournament.

They will now face ENCE in the grand final taking place on Sunday at 17:00 , where they will hope to justify their favorite status and be in with a chance of reaching the #1 position in the HLTV rankings.

The two semi-finalists had faced each other in the group stage already, where FaZe prevailed in a 2-1 win. The semi-final had the exact same veto as the group stage game, with FaZe picking Inferno, FURIA picking Mirage and the potential decider happening on Nuke.

The first map of the series, Inferno, started off with FURIA looking strong with Andrei "⁠arT⁠" Piovezan's trademark aggressive pushes and Yuri "⁠yuurih⁠" Santos's impenetrable A hold as they shut out the FaZe terrorist side, limiting them to only five rounds.

FURIA took the momentum from their successful first half with a pistol round win reaching a 13-5 lead before FaZe were able to strike back. Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's boys were undeterred by their massive disadvantage as they started racking up rounds. They managed to get an incredible eleven rounds in a row with the help of some multi kills by ropz who started to get warmed up after a lackluster first half. They closed out the game with a 16-13 win, making amends for their loss on the map previously in the tournament.

Mirage was the next battleground, where FURIA managed to get together a more successful terrorist side even without the pistol round win. The Brazilians came back from a 6-1 deficit to win the half 8-7 with Andrei "⁠arT⁠" Piovezan once again proving to be the difference maker, as FURIA managed to provide enough misdirection to keep their opponents guessing.

With just a one round difference between the teams at half time the map was wide open. It was yuurih who made the pistol round his own as he got three kills and obtained bomb control, but FaZe were quick to strike back with just a few non-armored upgraded pistols. The next round was once again won with a low economy round, as FURIA got their forcebuy to work and took a two round lead. But after the Brazilians reached 13 rounds once again, they started to falter and let FaZe back into the game, as was the case in the previous map.

The scoreline was soon tied up at 13-13 after five straight rounds by FaZe before FURIA stabilized and managed to force out overtime. Once the stakes got even higher, the FaZe star power shone through with a massive clutch round by ropz and Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants, with FaZe eventually closing out the map with a 19-16 score.