Vitality vs Virtus.pro: Can the Bears Stop the French Power?

Vitality and G2 went through the playoffs undefeated straight into the quarterfinals, not feeling much resistance in their groups. Virtus.pro, in turn, in addition to G2, was beaten by FaZe. However, the victory over FURIA in 1/8 EPL added confidence to the team.

ZywOo's excellent form cannot be ignored - his rating never dropped below 7.0 during the ESL Pro League group stage. Mathieu was one of the main reasons the French did not lose a match in their group. Spinx is also strong, and so far, he looks like a valuable asset for the club and a definite improvement.

It's hard to conclude Virtus.pro. FL1T looks like an invincible killing machine from time to time, but against teams like FaZe and G2, he is not very successful in repeating such success. The club is still treading water and can't reach the tier-1 level. Did the transition of fame and FL1T get closer to that goal? There are doubts.

Vitality has several options of what map to pick first in a map veto. And the best option against the "bears" would be Dust 2, simply because the CIS team often fails against teams of a higher level on it. Virtus.pro against Vitality would be more logical to take the conditional Vertigo. However, the main advantage for apEX and his teammates will be better articulation on all maps except Ancient. This puts Virtus.pro in an awkward position regarding the killer if that happens.

What do we end up with? Vitality looks much stronger. We don't rule out a variant in which a full bo3 will be played, but the victory will still be for the Europeans.

More detailed pre-match statistics are available here.