G2 ease past Movistar Riders to EPL playoff’s second round

Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and company will face ENCE in the second round of the ESL Pro League Season 17 playoffs.

G2 showed why they went into their series in the first round of the playoffs against Movistar Riders as the heavy favorites to take the match and brushed aside the Spaniards in two straightforward maps, Vertigo (16-10) and Inferno (16-6).

Alejandro "⁠alex⁠" Masanet and his men removed G2’s fear-inducing Nuke from the pool and picked Vertigo to kick the series off. It didn’t pay off immediately, however, as although the Riders have been showing better and better performances on LAN after several disastrous months, their slow starts to halves against G2 were a big crutch when trying to take down the giants in front of them.

The two newest additions, Pere "⁠sausol⁠" Solsona Saumell and Antonio "⁠Martinez⁠" Martinez, spearheaded the Spanish squad’s efforts on the attacking side of Vertigo to a slight 8-7 lead at the half, but a reactive defense that gave too much space and didn’t turn proactive until the 25th round ended up with the Riders slipping up on their map pick, 10-16.

G2 went for the classic Inferno, where a top performer in Vertigo, Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage, continued to show his best. Despite the 3-3 scoreline after Riders managed to tie things up early on, the Ts were quick to run ahead and hit double digits. Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen and his men won their third pistol round of the series — the only pistol round they lost, on Vertigo, was turned around in the forcebuy —, and from there on out the international squad dominated to victory, 16-6.

"I’ve had quite a long career, right?" NiKo joked after the match in an interview on the B broadcast. "There were some good signs when I was in FaZe, when we had our peak, but we never managed to win the biggest trophies. Right now I kind of feel the same, but we’re better and more consistent.

"This lineup is working much harder than past rosters during my whole career," he continued," so it feels good to achieve this. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself and say we’re amazing — we’re just getting started with something good and there are still a lot of things that we have to accomplish before we can say this is an era. We’re on a good path and we’re humble when we’re playing. Things are going well so far."

Date	Matches
ESL Pro League Season 17
22/03/2023	ENCE 15:30 G2	Match

The Spaniards will be happy to have made it to a Big Event playoff, even if a whole 16 teams made it to the EPL's final bracket, after an arduous period of waning results since the departure of AWPer Alvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" Garcia. The result will no doubt give the team fresh confidence moving forward as well as valuable experience for the two Big Event neophytes, sausol and Martinez.

G2 on the other hand will have used the opening round of the playoff bracket to warm back up after watching ESL Pro League from the sidelines for a month. They competed in Group A and will now go against a team on a roll from the last week of play, the Group D runners up ENCE, on Wednesday at 19:00 .