FURIA capitalize on M80's mistakes to seal final EPL S21 Stage 2 berth

"Every round is good, you're just f*cking throwing," an understandably upset dephh told his team after their third fumble in a row on the Anubis decider.

FURIA have locked in the final Stage 2 spot at ESL Pro League Season 21 after beating M80 in a three-map series.

The Brazilian team limped through with a 3-2 record to somewhat recover from a dismal campaign in Stockholm.

They had decisively beaten Lynn Vision in their opener before losses to SAW and MIBR sent them to the elimination pool, and it took them almost every regulation round across a 2-1 victory to scrape past NRG before they advanced in this qualifying spat.

M80's EPL run ends with a whimper after they went from 2-0 to 2-3 following losses to SAW, 3DMAX, and FURIA, making too many mistakes down the line to get the job done against Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo's side.

skullz steps up massively to haul FURIA over the line

As if to prove how lackluster both teams have been at EPL, the series started with FURIA stealing M80's Mirage pick in dominant fashion before the American-majority side cruised to victory on Dust2.

Felipe "⁠skullz⁠" Medeiros led the charge for FURIA on the former, topping the board with a 23-9 K-D and 1.88 rating, and he stepped up immensely on the Anubis decider with several key multi-frag rounds to halt M80 in their tracks.

A quad-kill from the back of B to recover a 2v5 and a triple to win the round 14 force-buy in the second half stood out as highlights among skullz's 121.7 ADR, 1.69-rated map, and he spoke to their impact in a post-match interview with Freya "⁠Freya⁠" Spiers.

"We're starting to just win these kinds of rounds, and at this level these kinds of rounds are what matter," he said. "We just need to show it, we have really strong individuals, and I think only in these last few games we were able to show that. I'm just glad I could help my team, and everyone played amazing also."

M80 head home after Anubis collapse

M80 could have run with the confidence from their victory on Dust2 and taken an early lead on the Anubis decider, but consecutive losses to an eco, in a 2v5, and in a 2v2 post-plant snatched that wind from their sails.

Coach Rory "⁠dephh⁠" Jackson had burned all of his timeouts by halftime just trying to get his team back on track, but there was little he could say by the end of that series of lost rounds with the team simply making too many mistakes despite good early game plans.

"Every round is good, you're just fucking throwing," he told his team after the lost 2v2.

Disappointment was clear on Mason "⁠Lake⁠" Sanderson's face when conversing with Freya after the series, and he admitted that he misplayed that situation while explaining what went wrong for M80 as a whole.

"We just weren't communicating very well, it's something that happens a little bit in high-stress situations, we kinda crumble a bit in the comms," he said.

"Dead talk is a really big one, our team values dead talk really highly but sometimes in those high-stress environments people just aren't talking, and they need to.

"There was a round, it was a 2v2, I swung Camera, and even though I know I should be smoking it, the extra voices there should also be telling me to do that and we had to talk about that afterward. But obviously having that bad of a T side on a T side map, it's just going to be [hard] to claw back."