Vitality and Spirit have become the latest teams to reach the BLAST World Final 2024, setting up clashes with G2 and Astralis respectively. It was a short day on the server today, with both matches finishing 2:0. Let’s take a look at how both teams progressed in this all-important CS2 tournament.
Vitality make Semis over MOUZ despite stand-in
Credit: BLAST
Vitality, temporarily playing with JACKZ instead of mezii for this event, are playing impressively well given the circumstances. Today, they were able to take down MOUZ in what felt like a pretty easy 2:0. You have to complement Vitality, even if you also can’t ignore that this was yet another floundering from MOUZ on the big stage. MOUZ picked up 6 rounds apiece on Dust2 and Mirage, making this a series that hardly felt competitive.
Individually, this was a huge day for almost everyone in a Vitality jersey. Only IGL apEX went negative across the series, but with his teammates mopping up the kills like this, there was hardly any room for him to show up on his own. Crucially, JACKZ has been anything but a liability during his stand-in stint, going 23:15 across the two maps here. He’s still got it.
Tomorrow’s match sees Vitality go head to head with G2. With the star power we’re going to see on the server, we think it’s too close to call.
Spirit pile on FaZe misery
Credit: BLAST
The second match of the day saw Spirit pile onto FaZe Clan’s miserable 2024 by knocking them out of the BLAST World Final 2024 in the Quarter-Finals. This was another 2:0 affair, although FaZe pushed Spirit all the way on both maps. Double overtime was needed on the second map of Anubis for Spirit to close the series out, and given FaZe had a 12:9 lead at one point, they’ll be thoroughly disappointed they couldn’t at least bring this one to a deciding map.
We feel a little sorry for karrigan here. During Anubis, he reinvented himself as a world-class entry-fragger, consistently bagging FaZe 5v3 situations. Unfortunately, these were situations his team consistently threw away, underlining FaZe’s turbulent form throughout the year. A 5th-6th place finish in Singapore likely won’t prove to be enough to save this roster, although there’s still the Shanghai Major to be played.
For Spirit, they have all of donk, sh1ro, and zont1x online at the same time. It’s certainly a good omen for tomorrow’s Semi-Final against Astralis, which we expect Spirit to win.