IEM Summer 2021 Semi-finals concluded with a close win for the international squad of OG overr Vitality and a dominant show of form from Gambit to defeat G2.
OG edge out a win over Vitality
The international squad of OG secured their third Grand Finals by defeating Vitality in a tight series. The game started off with Vitality’s map pick of Dust 2 where OG picked up the pistol round and quickly converted that into 3 rounds. The teams continued with a back and forth exchange of rounds till OG pulled ahead and got to a decent lead, ending the half 9-6. Vitality looked like they had bounced back as they picked the 6 rounds out of the first 8 but OG picked up a set of 4 rounds to reach map point. Vitality matched them with 3 of their own and secured overtime. In overtime, OG managed to close the game out 19-17 and took the first map.
The next map started off close with an 8-7 half slightly favouring Vitality, but ZywOo and misutaaa’s fragging and clutches managed to quickly close the game. misutaaa’s couple of 1v3 clutches were instrumental as he closed out the game 16-9 pushing the series to Overpass. OG turned the table on Overpass as everyone on the team turned their individual level up. For the French side, only Kyojin was fragging at a high level and a quiet map for ZywOo meant that OG was able to pick the series up with ease and secured their berth in the Grand Finals.
Gambit show their sheer class in win over G2
Gambit, the best team in the world, matched up versus the Franco-Serbian squad of G2 and absolutely decimated them on both maps. Even from the veto, Analysts speculated that G2 weren’t confident in their map pool as they picked Ancient and it showed in the server. The scorelines for the game look closer than they actually were. The game started off on Gambit’s pick of Vertigo where Gambit quickly got off to a 6-0 start and after conceding 2 rounds to G2, they continued with their domination as they took the lead at the end of the half with an insane 13-2 scoreline. After that, it was only a matter of time, but Gambit struggled to close the game out quickly, allowing G2 to get to 10 rounds before finally closing the game.
Next up was G2’s pick of Ancient which the analysts had called a show of weakness for the international squad. The map played out in a similar fashion to Vertigo as Gambit again secured 13 rounds, this time on their defence. The second half was more of the same as Gambit secured the series point at 15-5 but allowed G2 4 more rounds before eliminating them and reached their 5th Big Event Grand Final in a row. Gambit will look to secure their 2nd trophy so far as they face OG who aren’t at their level just yet.
The Grand Finals starts at 4pm CEST, watch the game live on ESL’s Twitch Channel and check out our Quarter-Finals coverage here.
