NiKo hauls Falcons past FURIA in EPL elimination match

The Bosnian rifler tallied 1.43 and 1.61 ratings on Mirage and Dust2 to prevent an early exit.

Falcons have eliminated FURIA from ESL Pro League Season 21 Stage 2 after a scrappy three-map series in the 1-2 pool (13-16 Train, 16-14 Mirage, 13-9 Dust2).

It took everything in the tank for Damjan "⁠kyxsan⁠" Stoilkovski's side, who arrived in Sweden fresh from a runners-up finish at PGL Cluj-Napoca but were left staring down an early exit from EPL following losses to MOUZ and 3DMAX.

An exceptional performance from Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač was key in the victory, with numerous multi-kills hauling the team to a comeback victory on Mirage and preventing Dust2 from spiraling out of control.

Clip: NiKo tells chelo to "sit down" after winning 1v2 with sick one tap

chelo and skullz turn up on Train

FURIA scraped through Stage 1 with a 3-2 record but couldn't find their footing in Stage 2, getting revenge over MIBR for their only win while dropping series to MOUZ, Liquid, and Falcons.

The defeat will hurt even more considering the way things started on Train, where FURIA recovered from 3-7 down thanks to exceptional multi-fragging from Marcelo "⁠chelo⁠" Cespedes and Felipe "⁠skullz⁠" Medeiros.

Smiles were wiped off the faces of Falcons as they struggled to find a consistent way to break through, with Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif providing two key quad kills in the second half that helped his side force overtime. The Dane had been stellar alongside NiKo in the first half too, but their efforts weren't enough to get Falcons over the line after FURIA put up a flawless CT defense in the extra set of rounds.

The NiKo show begins

Mirage was equally as scrappy with the teams deadlocked at halftime. FURIA repeatedly abused B early in the first half to recover from a 1-4 deficit but lost momentum after fumbling their pistol win to a force buy in the second half.

NiKo stepped up to recover a 3v5 against FURIA's Deagles in the next round and Falcons took the lead, 9-7, but combat AWPing from Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo and great site defenses out of chelo and Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato spurred on a FURIA comeback.

The Brazilians pushed up to 11-7 and 12-8 leads and had Falcons economy in the bin, but NiKo's Deagle gunned down two in Connector to turn the tides. The Bosnian then got a triple kill and recovered a 3v5 alongside Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov in round 24 to force overtime, where the Russian sniper salvaged a kit to claim a last-millisecond defuse to close out the map.

Clip: NiKo and degster combine to force overtime

NiKo continued being a terror on Dust2, winning a 1v2 clutch and tallying several multi-kills alongside René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen to put his team ahead, 7-5.

FURIA won the second pistol and started gaining momentum, but gave away a 1v2 to kyxsan due to a poor post-plant on B and then lost another advantageous post-plant on the same site in the next round to a triple from NiKo.

Falcons took control from there to quickly hit series point, and just when things started looking shaky again a ridiculous triple spraydown by Magisk — whose POV was missed live and not replayed — allowed them to close things out.