FURIA beat Apeks to win Elisa Masters Espoo 2023

The Brazilian team ended a title drought on LAN with a hard-fought victory against the European side.

FURIA won the 2023 edition of Elisa Masters Espoo after defeating Apeks 3-1 in the best-of-five grand final. For the Brazilian team, the victory finally brings an end to a trophyless period in international LANs that stretched back to September 2019, when they won the Arctic Invitational, also held in Finland.

The coincidence was not lost on Andrei "⁠arT⁠" Piovezan. "Yeah, I think so,” he said after the final when asked if the Brazilian heat works in the Finnish cold. "It's been a while since we last won a tournament. Winning here is amazing.”

The season is not yet over for FURIA, who will travel to Dubai to compete at BetBoom Dacha. arT is confident that the team will be able to carry their current momentum into this tournament and beyond. "It gives us confidence for the next tournaments. We're going to be way more confident."

The best-of-five series kicked off on Inferno, Apeks’ map pick, with the European side picking up an early lead. FURIA took control of the game once they had money to work with and ended the half up 8-4, with Marcelo "⁠chelo⁠" Cespedes picking up an ace in the 11th round. Apeks attempted a comeback in the second half, equalizing the score at 8-8 after a bright start to their CT side, before FURIA picked up the pace and locked down the map off the back of a quad kill by arT.

Yuri "⁠yuurih⁠" Santos began the action on Ancient with a trio of frags in the pistol round, setting FURIA up for a 3-0 lead. But that intensity was nowhere to be seen once both teams had money to work with. Apeks kept their defense very tight for the remainder of the half and went into the break up 8-4, with Joakim "⁠jkaem⁠" Myrbostad boasting a staggering 132 ADR.

The second half followed the same pattern as the first, as FURIA came out the brighter of the two teams before Apeks ran away with the game in gun rounds, once again with the Norwegian leading the charge.

Apeks took that momentum into Vertigo as they raced to a 5-1 lead on the CT side. FURIA then finally found their footing in the game and added four more rounds to their tally, and they could have even gone into the break with the lead if it weren’t for Tim "⁠nawwk⁠" Jonasson’s quad kill with a Desert Eagle.

The tone of the game changed in the second half, with FURIA taking control of proceedings on the CT side. Even with a massive blunder in the 19th round - a wasted 4x2 retake that saw Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo fall off the map -, the Brazilians kept their cool at all times and quickly put the game to bed.

Next up was Mirage, which had proven to be a successful map for FURIA in Espoo, with victories over MOUZ and HAVU. The Brazilian team came out firing on all cylinders as they romped to a 5-1 lead, but the rest of the half was all about Apeks’ water-tight defense as Damjan "⁠kyxsan⁠" Stoilkovski’s troops restored parity at 6-6 before the side switch.

Now playing on the T side, Apeks took the first three rounds convincingly to get within one round of double digits. It looked like the series could go to a fifth map, but everything changed when FURIA got their first round of the half, with only a couple of guns. chelo and Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato were in dominant shape as FURIA went on a 7-0 run to secure the map and the trophy.