NAVI eliminate FaZe to set up Astralis playoff decider

Another bad day in the office sees FaZe go home with a disappointing 9th-12th finish.

Natus Vincere have staved off elimination from IEM Cologne after dealing FaZe a 0-2 loss in the Group B lower bracket. Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev and company will play Astralis at 19:30 next for a spot in the playoffs.

The brawly series began with Natus Vincere locking down Mirage with a convincing performance, which began with a s1mple 1v3 and ended with new star additions to the squad, Justinas "⁠jL⁠" Lekavicius and Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan, combining for nearly 50 kills.

FaZe did not turn up individually until it came to Overpass, but despite their improved form they could not match up against a red-hot s1mple. The Ukrainian superstar powered NAVI to an overtime victory on the second map with a 40-bomb, finding crucial multikills all throughout the map to lock down the series in two.

FaZe had had another tough series the day before against G2 and seemingly could not find their form in time to match up to a hard-shooting NAVI.

"I didn't feel like they were FaZe, usually when you play FaZe you get headshotted instantly and they swing on you together, and it was kinda lacking that," jL said in an interview on the analyst desk after the match.

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen admitted shortly after that FaZe didn't feel like themselves. "I think three out of four maps we were not ourselves. The way we were losing to NAVI in the first map and the way we were losing to G2 in the first map, it's just not good enough."

"We practiced so good, we had a good run in BLAST, we kinda felt good confidence coming into this tournament. We had a rough start against NIP, but won two good games, everybody on fire... But last two days people forgot to turn on their monitors, I don't know. Right now a very, very rough feeling and obviously very disappointed," the Dane shared.