Spirit edge past Astralis after sh1ro clutch; ZywOo dominates Heroic

donk struggled against Astralis while ZywOo recorded another inhuman performance.

The final 1-0 games of PGL Major Copenhagen Europe RMR B have concluded, seeing Spirit and Vitality advance to the 2-0 qualification matches after securing wins over Astralis and HEROIC, respectively.

Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut followed up his phenomenal start to the tournament against GamerLegion with another otherwordly performance against HEROIC, tallying his second ace of the event in round two against Glocks and never letting up from that moment on.

Vitality won nine rounds on the defense and wasted no time in converting that into victory in the second half, with their French superstar recording an absurd 25-6 K-D, 2.64 rating, 2.98 impact, and 164.3 ADR to put his team through to the 2-0 pool.

ZywOo's fearsome form should have Vitality's next opponents, Cloud9, on notice heading into day two, particularly as the Russian squad lacks a primary sniper and has yet to show consistency swapping it between Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy and Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov.

Spirit and Astralis went head to head in the remaining 1-0 match of the first day, with the Danes surprising the IEM Katowice champions by taking the fight to Vertigo. "We expected to play Ancient," Boris "⁠magixx⁠" Vorobiev revealed to HLTV after the game.

It was evident the veto caught Spirit off-guard as they struggled at various points in the game, particularly on the CT side where Astralis had a clear game plan to counter Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets. The Russian wunderkind was consistently abused on the B bombsite in the half, but still stepped up with an immense quad kill amidst a chaotic bombsite execute from Astralis to give Spirit some momentum.

Astralis seized firm control once on the CT side themselves, however, and won five rounds straight to hit double-digits and close in on victory. donk was being abused with a 0-7 record in opening duels, and so instead it was Myroslav "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia who stepped up to tally an important round for Spirit and deny Astralis match point.

Spirit then took the lead at 12-11 before a perfect bait setup from Astralis in the final round of the map made it look like we were assuredly headed for overtime. It was denied, however, as instead a 1vs3 clutch from Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov allowed Spirit to narrowly clinch victory and set up a game against MOUZ for a spot at the Major.