As seen recently, FPX VALORANT was unable able play their first round playoffs series against Fnatic with their full first active roster, as unfortunately it seems likely that Dmitry “SUYGETSU” Ilyushin arrived just a couple of hours late to the VCT Masters Copenhagen stage, all of this information according to FPX coach Erik “d00mbr0s” Sandgren.
SUYGETSU, a Russian based player, also missed out on the group stage section of the event while waiting on his visa process to be finished just to travel to Denmark, he was originally supposed to join the team just in time for playoffs after his visa was issued early in the hours of July 13th. Many within the organization and the community expected FPX’s match against Fnatic to be set on Friday July 15th, in order to give SUYGETSU enough time to arrive in the venue, but Riot Games scheduled the match earlier for July 14th, at the end signifying the team will play a series for the fourth consecutive day.
In regards to his replacement, active substitute Mathias “SEIDER” Seider, a player based from Denmark who has played for both Wave Esports and Alliance, was the first choice to fill in directly at the controller role during FPX’s group stage victories against Northeption and XERXIA. Currently, FPX has been able to play very well as a team, however due to the circumstances, has heavily relied upon some magnificent Chamber showing from Ardis “ardiis” Svarenieks.
Both FPX and Fnatic will meet in what will most likely be a rematch of the previous EMEA VCT Stage Two finals. Fnatic did end up winning in that instance as the series finished with a 3-0 sweep, which ultimately provided them with the top EMEA seed at Masters and the highly coveted group seed bye, nevertheless two of those map victories were extremely close ending with overtime. SUYGETSU played a major role on both Cypher and Killjoy, with him keeping the previously mentioned two maps close.
Both opponents in the last EMEA clash are no strangers to difficulties of the travel process, as this has been happening in previous events as well. FPX as an entire team was unable to attend Masters Reykjavk due to having two Russian players and a Ukrainian player in the roster, despite in that instance finishing first in EMEA Stage One. In Fnatic’s case they were forced to play with two active substitutes in Iceland as former player BraveAF was unable to travel, and superstar Derke ultimately tested positive for COVID in that tournament.
As of the moment, both FPX and Fnatic are looking to prove that indeed they are one of the better teams within VCT Masters Copenhagen. Due to circumstances previously mentioned, the community has slowly lost interest or “hype” around the star studded rosters. However thanks to social media presence, Fnatic has remained somewhat prevalent, as for FPX solely their gameplay will have to speak for them.