FaZe tally first playoff win with EliGE to reach Cluj-Napoca semi-final

EliGE won his first big stage game in 14 months after missing out on a chance to play in arenas with Complexity in 2024.

FaZe have pushed on to the semi-final of PGL Cluj-Napoca after repeating their group stage victory over SAW in the BT Arena, playing the final notes to the Portuguese side's swan song with Ricardo "⁠roman⁠" Oliveira and José "⁠Shr⁠" Gil in a 2-0 series to set up a challenge against Falcons on Saturday.

Date	Matches
PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025
22/02/2025	Falcons 20:00 FaZe	Match

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's side was already a favorite to win the event and lived up to that billing with a 3-0 trip through the group stage, a result which the Danish captain described as a "strange feeling" in a pre-match interview after numerous years laboring through the early stages of events only to come alive in the arena.

"It definitely feels nice, being the favorites as well, I think a lot of people are expecting us to have a good performance," Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski told James "⁠BanKs⁠" Banks in a post-match interview.

"For us we're obviously taking it game by game, but we're feeling really strong going into the semi-finals. We're going to be playing against Falcons and they were looking very good too, so it's going to be a good game."

EliGE gets first Big Event arena victory since BLAST Fall Final 2023

After narrowly missing out on a spot in the Spodek following a loss to Eternal Fire in the lower bracket of IEM Katowice's group stage, EliGE finally made it back to a Big Event arena in his second LAN with FaZe.

Despite the American's individual excellence in 2024, Complexity missed out on Big Event arena berths and only made playoffs at ESL Pro League. Getting a win after returning to the stage clearly meant a lot to EliGE, who was beaming in his stage interview after FaZe closed out Nuke.

"It feels nice," he said. "It's been a long time since I've been in an arena, it feels like so long (laughs), so it really is nice, it's a really nice vibe, and the Counter-Strike is a lot more fun."

SAW's attempt to target Nuke as a weakness backfires

FaZe handled SAW with aplomb on Ancient, storming to a 13-4 victory thanks to key quad kill rounds by karrigan and Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard and a 1v2 clutch by Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants to close out.

Nuke has been a pain point for EliGE on this FaZe roster, though, with the American recording 0.84 or lower ratings in four out of five maps before this series, and SAW had pushed karrigan's side the distance on the map in the group stage.

The Portuguese side picked the map again but couldn't replicate that result, with EliGE ending the map with a 1.41 rating and 21-16 K-D and looking more settled in his roles.

Though things got closer than they would have liked, FaZe never truly looked uncomfortable and closed out 13-9, with EliGE welcoming other teams to challenge them on the map if they think it is a weakness.

"We're still trying some things on Nuke as you can see, find different solutions since we've been struggling on it in the last couple of matches," EliGE said. "I think we played a lot better in this one, definitely an improvement, so yeah it looks good."