KRÜ Esports continue cinderella run at Champions, will face Gambit in semifinals

The final tournament of the 2021 VALORANT Champions Tour is proving to be quite the surprise, and now we know the final four teams that have a shot at winning Champions, the biggest event of the year.

Thursday’s quarterfinals started off with a match between X10 CRIT and Gambit Esports, the former of which surprised the world when they ousted Envy 2-1 in the decider match during groups. Turns out that’s where their winning streak ended though, since Gambit won their game today 2-1.

The game wasn’t completely lopsided, since X10 CRIT were able to take a map off of Gambit, but every single match ended in a 13-7 score. Gambit won the first map on Fracture and last map on Breeze and X10 CRIT won Ascent.

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The second match of the day was between KRÜ Esports and Fnatic. If Fnatic had won the match, they would have been the fourth EMEA team to make it into the semifinals, which would have meant that every EMEA team that entered the tournament made it to the semifinals. It would have obviously guaranteed an EMEA champions.

But, that’s not how it played out. KRÜ Esports, who kicked Sentinels out of the tournament, made yet another impressive showing, showing to the world that they shouldn’t be underestimated.

Fnatic did not underestimate them. Nikita "Derke" Sirmitev commented on their improvement from when they last faced them in Masters: Reykjavík.

“They're a great team. We didn’t underestimate them,” he said. “We knew they are good. We fought them in Iceland and they were worse, but now they improved and got [better at playing]. Like we didn’t underestimate them, they have good passion, good players, a good team plan and good strats which is really nice to see.”

Photo credit: Riot Games

The win was very significant for the Latin American team, according to Nicolas "Klaus" Ferrari, speaking with the press after the match.

“This moment is really important not just for me, it's important for all the, all the LATAM and all the Spanish speakers of the world,” Klaus said.

The match played out similarly to X10 and Gambit’s, except the first map went into overtime, with KRÜ taking Haven 15-13. Fnatic took their pick -- Icebox -- decidedly, 13-6, but KRÜ came back strong and took Split.

Although Fnatic made a run for a couple rounds while KRÜ were on match point, they weren’t able to play catch-up and lost the map 13-8, ultimately losing the match 2-1.

With Fnatic’s loss, EMEA still has a good chance at being one of the teams that takes home the championship, but Latin America still has a hand in the competition, and they’ve proven that they are not a team to be taken lightly.

On Saturday, the world will find out who will play in the grand final match. The matches will be Acend vs. Team Liquid and Gambit Esports vs. KRÜ Esports.

Lead photo credit: Riot Games