After the third week of EMEA Stage 2, three teams have secured their spot in the playoffs. Each sitting at 3-0 records, Team Liquid Team Liquid Europe Rank #5 paTiTek Patryk Fabrowski nAts Ayaz Akhmetshin trexx Nikita Cherednichenko Keiko Georgio Sanassy kamo Kamil Frąckowiak , Team Heretics Team Heretics Europe Rank #2 MiniBoo Dominykas Lukaševičius Wo0t Mert Alkan RieNs Enes Ecirli benjyfishy Benjamin David Fish Boo Ričardas Lukaševičius , and FNATIC FNATIC Europe Rank #1 crashies Austin Roberts Boaster Jake Howlett kaajak Kajetan Haremski Chronicle Timofey Khromov Alfajer Emir Ali Beder continue to stand above the rest of the region.

This week's match results are as follows:

While the three Masters Toronto representatives all found wins this week, none of them were comfortable.

Team Heretics was the only of the three teams to win 2-0, but required some comebacks to do so. Team Vitality Team Vitality Europe Rank #19 Derke Nikita Sirmitev Kicks Kimmie Laasner UNFAKE Bartosz Bernacki KovaQ Blendi Kovaci Less Felipe de Loyola Basso started both maps well in control, but Heretics dominated the second halves to take their wins. MiniBoo had a crucial error early on in Haven, but more than made up for it with a stellar performance on the rest of the map. Ascent, on the other hand, was ruled by Wo0t , whose Jett dominated their attack side.

A huge blunder from MiniBoo on an otherwise great map performance.

Similar to the Heretics game, Natus Vincere Natus Vincere Europe Rank #18 ANGE1 Kyrylo Karasov Shao Andrey Kiprsky alexiiik Alex Hawlasek Ruxic Uğur Güç hiro Emirhan Kat started out dominantly on all three of their maps against the reigning EMEA champions. They strung together loads of consecutive rounds, reading into FNATIC's tendencies. Each time however, FNATIC managed to adapt and wrangle their way back into the map to make it close. NAVI could have had a 2-0 victory, but they couldn't close out map one from up 12-8, and ended up losing the map in overtime. They won map two, but on map 3, even Ruxic 's 31 kill performance wasn't enough to take down the kings of EMEA. Still, pushing the top EMEA team to the brink was a great improvement from NAVI compared to their crushing defeat to Liquid last week.

Lastly, Team Liquid, who have been coasting for the past two weeks, met their first challenge, surprisingly against Apeks Apeks Europe Rank #125 penny Erik Penny OLIZERA Diogo Oliveira MOLSI Michał Łącki AvovA Auni Chahade batujnax Mehmet Batu Özaslan . The usually consistently strong Liquid struggled against the winless Ascension team, nearly dropping the series 2-0. However, they managed to come back from a 4-8 half on the first map to win in overtime, and then dominated Apeks on map three. Now at 0-3, Apeks' hopes of staying in the league are looking slim. They will need to win next week's match against KOI to have a chance at making playoffs.

EMEA's other Ascension team is in the same boat as Apeks, as Gentle Mates Gentle Mates Europe Rank #96 Proxh Yusuf Emre Tunc Veqaj Sylvain Pattyn ComeBack Berkcan Şentürk Minny Patrik Hušek kamyk Maks Rychlewski also sits at a 0-3 record, though in a much different fashion. For the third week in a row, the M8s have squandered a massive lead to lose the series. In week one, they lost a 12-6 lead to FUT Esports FUT Esports Europe Rank #14 xeus Doğan Gözgen MrFaliN Furkan Yeğen yetujey Eray Budak cNed Mehmet Yağız İpek qRaxs Doğukan Balaban . In week two, they lost a 12-4 lead to Heretics. Now, this week, they lost a 12-5 lead to BBL Esports BBL Esports Europe Rank #7 Jamppi Elias Olkkonen sociablEE Volkan Yonal PROFEK Dawid Święć LewN Burak Alkan MAGNUM Martin Penkov . ComeBack dominated the first half of Lotus to get a 10-2 lead, but after Gentle Mates lost a 3v1 to Jamppi at match point, BBL swept the rest of the map to win in overtime. The M8s now need to win their following two matches to have a chance to defend their spot in EMEA.

One Jamppi clutch snowballed into a full comeback.

The other Turkish team, FUT, was able to recover from getting stomped the week prior by Vitality. They managed to take down GIANTX GIANTX Europe Rank #25 Cloud Kirill Nehozhin grubinho Grzegorz Ryczko westside Miłosz Duda Flickless Karel Maeckelbergh ara Hanceriuc Eduard-George , a team that has been on the rise this stage, in convincing fashion. cNed has continued to deliver great performances on his new Controller role. At 2-1, FUT need one more win to secure playoffs, but going against Heretics and BBL the next two weeks, it may prove a challenge.

Finally, Karmine Corp Karmine Corp Europe Rank #11 saadhak Matias Delipetro Avez Hazem Khaled Elite Efe Teber SUYGETSU Dmitry Ilyushin marteen Martin Pátek found their second win going against KOI KOI Europe Rank #260 nataNk Nathan Bocqueho baddyG Kamil Graniczka MONSTEERR Ondřej Petrů Filu Dawid Czarnecki flyuh Xavier Carlson . After a sloppy win last week against Apeks, they had a much cleaner win this week, stomping their opponents on maps 2 and 3. Avez lit up the server on the rare Phoenix pick, and now stands as the number two rated player in the league, only behind Keiko .

With playoffs and elimination at stake, next week's matches are as follows: