The Grand Final of IEM Cologne is set and features the two top teams in the world

After lots of drama and big upsets the stage is finally set for the grand-final of the CS:GO tournament IEM Cologne. Despite the drama, the two top teams in the world still managed to find their way to the grand-final. FaZe Clan (2) ended the dream run of Movistar Riders (13) to earn their spot in the grand-final, shutting down the Cinderella team from Spain two maps to zero. Movistar Riders should still be going home a happy squad, having gone from a team considered to be 2nd tier at best to now beating top tier teams and going all the way from the play-in bracket to the final four. Movistar’s squad of Spaniards beat the likes of Liquid, Vitality x2, G2, and MIBR on their run but eventually hit the brick wall that is Karrigan and the rest of FaZe Clan’s squad. In the first half of the first map against FaZe, Movistar’s best player in the tournament ‘SunPayus’ recorded just one single kill.

On the other end of the semi-final was the number one team in the world Natus Vincere going up against Danish side Astralis. Astralis will be happy with this result, it being their best placing at a large tournament since coming in 3rd at BLAST Premier Fall 2021. NaVi dominated the Danes on the first map to the tune of 16-8, with superstar Aleksandr ‘S1imple’ Kostyliev showing off just why most if not all CSGO fanboys like myself consider him to be the GOAT. In the very first pistol round s1mple popped off for 3 kills to give the NaVi boys a shot of adrenaline from the jump and went on to accrue a humble 17 kills on the CT side of the first map. NaVi eventually finished off Astralis on the first map without much trouble, but the 2nd map was a different story entirely. It started off with NaVi winning another pistol round, but then Astralis popped off themselves and won 11 rounds in a row, ending the first half of the 2nd map with a 12-3 scoreline. NaVi soon started to storm back and stomp all over Astralis’ dreams in the process, with s1mple forcing overtime with three kills and a no-scope as the cherry on top in the final round of regular time. NaVi went on to close out overtime 19-17 and grab their spot in the grand-final.

The grand-final between NaVi and FaZe will take place at 10 am eastern at twitch.tv/ESL_CSGO. Who ever wins this best-of-5 match will leave Cologne as the best team in the world, but don’t take it from me, take it from Ilya ‘Perfecto’ Zalutskiy who spoke to HLTV.org and told them “this tournament will decide who the number one team is”.

Bonus: Check out how many people are at this stadium to watch the semi-finals