OG trounce Apeks to qualify for Cologne group stage

Nils "⁠k1to⁠" Gruhne will fly the German flag in the group stage as the only home country representative.

OG have booked their place in the IEM Cologne group stage after getting the better of Apeks in two one-sided maps (16-6 Mirage, 16-10 Inferno). The Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković-led squad became the penultimate team to qualify for the 16-team main event, and the Serbian IGL couldn't hide his pride in his post-match interview.

"We haven't shown the best CS so far, but today we showed up, and we really hit our shots and communicated well. I'm also really happy about our CT sides, we worked on them a lot," began nexa. "I'm still learning how to use the players that I have, but the progress since BLAST has been great, we took all the losses on the chin and learned from them."

On the other side of the server, Apeks were visibly disappointed by their performance against OG, something that Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk confirmed in his post-match thoughts. "This was definitely not us," the Slovakian veteran started his assessment. "Usually we are good in the back against the wall situations, but today it just didn't click, it wasn't even our B game. It felt like they won Inferno on Mirage already."

The qualification match started on OG's pick of Mirage, and the opening exchanges were quite scrappy. That was until a well-coordinated eco push on the A site netted OG their fifth, returning them to winning ways and completely flipping the momentum of the game. The nexa-led squad won every round of the half after that, giving them a stellar platform to go a map up in the series, which they did with a convincing 16-6 victory.

The next map was equally dominated by Dion "⁠FASHR⁠" Derksen and company, who shut down Apeks's offense with a dominant 12-3 half. While their T side wasn't entirely convincing, their win was just a matter of time as they eventually closed out the map 16-10 and moved on to the IEM Cologne group stage.