OpTic, XSET quiet EMEA-friendly crowd at VALORANT Champions

Last year at VALORANT Champions, North American teams faltered while European teams reigned supreme, ultimately resulting in an EMEA vs. EMEA final that Acend won. This year’s Champions is shaping up much differently.

North America’s OpTic Gaming and XSET beat EMEA’s Team Liquid and Fnatic, respectively, on Saturday in the upper quarterfinals of VALORANT Champions in a show of strength for the NA region. Both teams won despite the Turkish crowd in Istanbul being heavily in favor of the EMEA teams. The crowd was especially cheering hard for Fnatic, who have a Turkish player on their roster, Emir Ali "Alfajer" Beder.

“Rory and I had a chat with the team beforehand and said, ‘Look, there’s a Turkish player on the team, we’re not gonna be the favorites here,’” said XSET head coach Don “Syyko” Muir about talking to the team alongside in-game leader Rory “dephh” Jackson.

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“We’re not gonna get a lot of cheers, but let’s use that as motivation and energy to really bring this home,” Syyko continued. “Let’s go out here and show these guys that next time they see XSET they’re gonna say, ‘Oh man, I was in the crowd when they 2-0’d Fnatic,’ and that’s exactly what we did.”

OpTic in-game leader Pujan “FNS” Mehta said in a postmatch broadcast interview that hearing the crowd cheering so fervently for Team Liquid “makes me angry.”

“It just triggered me from the start seeing that many people supporting not us,” FNS said.

Read more: OpTic reach VALORANT Champions playoffs after beating Brazilian rival LOUD

His always-smiling teammate and one of the early leaders for MVP of the tournament, Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker, mostly tuned out the crowd.

“For me, I was just locked in.” yay said. “I wasn’t really paying attention to the crowd. I could hear them occasionally during tech pauses and stuff like that, but for the most part, I was just in the game and not really paying attention to it.”

Photo credit: Riot Games

Yay finished the game against Team Liquid leading all players on either team with 69 kills and a +29 in kills over deaths. He had a monstrous 30-kill performance on the deciding third map.

Yay did understand his IGL’s sentiment though.

“I could see it from FNS’s standpoint because usually we don’t have a lot of fans that root for us, and it’s a little sad,” yay said.

OpTic Gaming are one of the more popular esports organizations in the world, but as a North American org, they have not received as much love in Europe, where all of the international VALORANT tournaments since last year have taken place.

As a smaller org, XSET pointed out in their postmatch press conference with reporters that they’re accustomed to not receiving as much support even in their home region.

Read more: XSET beat reigning Masters champion FPX to reach VALORANT Champions playoffs

“We’re used to being the underdogs even back in NA and back in previous tournaments, people are used to just not cheering for us, but it just gives us more motivation to prove them wrong,” Matthew "Cryocells" Panganiban said in a postmatch broadcast interview.

Photo credit: Riot Games

With most of NA regional competition happening online the past two years, XSET joked that they get booed online too.

“We like being the underdogs, we like playing from behind,” Syyko said. “We have something to prove always and we’re ready to prove it and we love proving it, and we love going in the face of what people accept and using that adversity to our advantage.”

OpTic vs. XSET, again

The double NA over EMEA wins mean the two North American teams will meet in an upper semifinal on Monday and one of them is guaranteed a trip to the upper final and at least a top three finish. Meanwhile, the two EMEA teams will meet in the lower bracket and one of them will knock the other out of the tournament. With the other EMEA team, FunPlus Phoenix, also in the lower bracket, it means only one EMEA team can ultimately make it through the lower bracket and potentially into the final.

Despite the good news for NA, neither OpTic nor XSET are too keen on playing each other again.

With OpTic’s game ending before XSET-Fnatic, FNS admitted he’d rather face Fantic than XSET.

“I’m just over playing NA teams,” he said.

“Really excited to play OpTic, you know, we’ve never gotten to play them,” Syyko quipped.

XSET and OpTic have played each other four times this year, including in the NA Stage 1 final and Masters: Reykjavík, the last international event. OpTic have won three of the four matchups.

“It’s kind of a running on joke that NA goes to international just to play NA again,” Cryocells said.

NA will face NA on the international stage once again Monday at 10 a.m. ET.

Lead photo credit: Riot Games