After a long set of days for CS:GO teams competing in multiple qualifiers, three teams have locked in their spots at the IEM Summer tournament in June. Both OG and FunPlus Phoenix secured their spots via the upper bracket of the closed qualifier, while G2 ran the gauntlet to snag the final spot a day later.
OG have been in impressive-looking form since adding Shahar “flameZ” Shushan just a few weeks ago. In his debut, they handed Astralis a 2-0 loss in dev1ce’s final match with the Danish side. They built on this win with two more in the closed qualifier against FaZe Clan and Movistar Riders.
FPX are also building on the momentum of a new signing, fresh off of adding Luka “emi” Vuković as the team’s in-game leader. They defeated two top-10 ranked teams on HLTV in BIG and G2 to secure their spot at IEM Summer.
G2’s loss against FPX in the final upper bracket round meant a tougher road was ahead for the Bosnian-French side, who needed to win two more series to snag the final spot. Their first test was against Nikola “NiKo” Kovač’s old team, FaZe, but the sniper/rifler hybrid superstar was tremendous on Train and Dust II. NiKo moved to 3-0 in series against his former team.
In the final series of the lower bracket, G2 squared off against mousesports, who had just secured a spot at Flashpoint Three an hour prior with a win over HAVU in that closed qualifier. Unfortunately for mousesports, it was their third-straight match of the day (with another coming right after) and they ran out of gas against G2. NiKo had another great series to close out the day and secure the IEM Summer spot for G2.
The three qualified teams join a stacked field at IEM Summer. Both Ninjas in Pyjamas and Astralis will be competing in June, along with other ESL partner teams Complexity, Evil Geniuses, Fnatic, and Vitality. Some of the top-ranked teams will be there too in Gambit, Heroic, and Virtus Pro. Only one spot remains and it’ll be determined in the National Championship playoff in May.
