Recap: Natus Vincere and Team Vitality move into the semi-finals

The first day of the ESL One Cologne 2019 Playoffs brought all spectators two rather fast games. Both Team Vitality and Natus Vincere won their games 2-0 and entered the semi-finals.

For NRG Esports and Ninjas in Pyjamas the tournament ended with a 5th-6th place, not a bad result after the recent changes for both teams.

With 16:7 on Dust2 and Mirage, the French team Vitality shot the US team NRG Esports from the server and secured a dominant victory as well as a place in the semi-finals against Astralis. On Dust2, the French started with a strong offensive and quickly took the lead 10:5. Also, the second half of Vitality started strong and increased to 13:5. The Americans could win two more rounds, but with 16:7 the first card had a clear winner.

On Mirage, the game was a bit different in the first half, this time NRG played a relatively good offensive and was only 7:8 behind at the break. However, the passable first half was followed by a terrible defensive, which was simply overrun by the French. NRG Esports did not win a single round in the second half and again lost 7:16 and the quarter-finals 0-2.

The second quarter-final between the Swedish team Ninjas in Pyjamas and the CIS team Natus Vincere also proved to be a very one-sided affair. NaVi defeated NiP on Inferno and Mirage quite clearly and rarely gave the Swedes time to recover. Surprisingly, it was Russia flamie who once again showed his best side and led the team to victory, of course closely followed by Ukraine s1mple and Russia electronic.

Actually, the game on Inferno didn’t look like a one-sided matchup at the beginning, despite NaVi’s 6:1 lead it was only 8:7 for the CIS team at the break. After the break NiP managed to take the lead 9:8 before Natus Vincere built up a strong defensive with the first full-buy and crushed all attempts of the Swedes. Inferno then went to NaVi with 16:12. On Mirage the game became much more one-sided, again Ukraine  Zeus and Co. played a strong defensive and led this time to the break with 10:5. After the break Ninjas in Pyjamas managed to win some more rounds and reduce the gap to 9:14, but they could not avert the defeat.