Fnatic wins DreamHack Malmö

Fnatic won the DreamHack Masters Malmö 2019 yesterday held at the Malmö Arena in Sweden, after beating Team Vitality 2-1 in a closely contested Grand Finals. Fnatic not only took home $100,000 as winnings but also will receive a direct invite to IEM Katowice 2020.

Fnatic's journey was nothing short of amazing after they made it to the finals, with a new roster, all the way from the lower brackets of the group stage which saw them play 16 maps throughout the tournament. The home teams highlight was decimating Astralis 2-0 in the semifinals and winning against Furia 34-32 in the lower bracket finals on Overpass.

It was impossible not to feel that it was a deserved victory for Fnatic, who were the better team for most of the finals. Rpk, on Dust2, and Alex, on Mirage, had some amazing performances to support ZywOo, but the French youngster simply had too much of a burden to carry against a Fnatic team led by Golden. Still, it was an impressive campaign from Vitality, who were playing their first tournament since replacing "NBK-" by "shox".

The finals started off with Dust 2 and Vitality winning the pistol round and quickly increasing their lead before Fnatic slowly clawed their way back to take a lead of 9-6 at halftime. The second half of the map saw Fnatic take a 14-12 lead. However, they were unable to capitalize on the momentum which let Vitality back and win the game 16-14.

The second game saw Fnatic play aggressively to take a 6-1 lead in their T side on Inferno. Vitality not be undone calmed their nerves and came back into the game after controlling the final stages of the first half to lose it by 1 round. Fnatic then played a solid defence in the second half to take a massive 15-9 lead but lost their nerves as they let Vitality take the game to overtime.

With their back against the wall, the veterans on Fnatic, JW and Krimz, calmed the team down and played some amazing CS and to win the game 19-16 and take the finals into the last map.

The final game on Mirage saw Vitality take a 9-6 lead at half time in a highly contested game with some stellar performance from Alex and flusha for their respective teams. After losing the pistol round in the second half, the Swedes assembled a compact defence, after improving their economy, and hit championship point without dropping a single round. With no margin for error, Vitality had the CTs against the ropes, but then, in true Fnatic fashion, they won around out of nowhere with nothing but pistols to send the home crowd into wild jubilation.

The MVP of the tournament was given to ZwyOo who had a 1.38 rating in the finals across all three maps. The French star led the tournament charts for KDD (+121), percentage of rounds with at least one kill (56.3%) and opening kills per round (0.16). He was also featured in the top five in seven other categories, including rating, damage per round (89.4), kills per round (0.89) and success in opening duels (65.7%). This was ZywOo's fourth award and his second even after losing the finals.