Sprout defeat MOUZ to secure ESL Challenger Valencia berth

Danny "⁠BERRY⁠" Krüger’s men denied MOUZ twice in a row in the upper bracket final and grand final to book their ticket to Spain.

Sprout qualified to ESL Challenger Valencia after a clean run through the closed qualifier’s upper bracket, where they left in their wake teams of the caliber of Entropiq and HEET in the first two rounds of play with 2-0 victories.

Sprout and MOUZ then found themselves in the grand final coming from the upper and lower brackets, respectively. The two teams had first met in the upper bracket final, where Timo "⁠Spiidi⁠" Richter and company won 2-0 in two close maps on Overpass and Inferno.

MOUZ then had to beat FORZE for the second time in this closed qualifier in the consolidation final, having been the ones to send them to the lower bracket in the first place, to earn the rematch against Sprout in the grand final.

The qualifying series kicked off on Sprout’s pick of Vertigo, where Rasmus "⁠raalz⁠" Steensborg’s men got off to a flying start on the attacking side with a 5-2 lead, but MOUZ then put up a wall on the defense allowing only the last round to slip between their fingers to lead 9-6 before switching sides.

Sprout tied it up off the bat on the back of a pistol win before taking the lead in what became an incredibly close half that ended in the very last round of regulation, with Sprout edging their pick.

Sprout made it three for three in pistol rounds on the CT side of Inferno, but were quickly overwhelmed by MOUZ as soon as the latter were able to get their hands on rifles, finding plenty of success all the way to an 8-7 lead despite Fritz "⁠slaxz-⁠" Dietrich putting up 17 kills in the half.

Once again Sprout won a pistol round, although MOUZ struck right back with a forcebuy, just to go on and crumble against glocks, a hit that proved costly as the German-Danish-Romanian team cruised to 14-10 before MOUZ could react.

In the end it was too little, too late, as the CTs only managed to salvage two successful defenses before giving up the map and series, which went to Sprout 16-12 and secured their passage to the ESL Challenger tournament in Valencia taking place on July 1-3.

The ESL Challenger Valencia team list so far is: