FUT Esports FUT Esports Europe Rank #7 xeus Doğan Gözgen MrFaliN Furkan Yeğen yetujey Eray Budak AtaKaptan Ata Tan cNed Mehmet Yağız İpek qRaxs Doğukan Balaban kicked off their Valorant Champions 2023 run with a 2-0 win over T1 T1 Korea Rank #2 stax Kim Gu-taek (김구택) Meteor Kim Tae-oh (김태오) Sylvan Go Young-sup (고영섭) BuZz Yu Byeong-cheol (유병철) iZu Ham Woo-ju (함우주) in the first opening match of Group B. FUT will now move to the winner's finals, whereas T1 has been relegated to the elimination match.

The win marks a big pivot for FUT, who struggled in their opening Masters Tokyo match, where Evil Geniuses dealt them a 2-0 loss. They are now set to fight for first place in their group with just 11 rounds lost, and they look sharp as ever.

qw1 , especially, looks to have finally returned to form after struggling in Japan. He undersold with his Pearl performance, being the only FUT player to not score over a 1.00 rating, but was a step above all on Haven. So much so, he scored the tournament's second ace with just a pistol in hand in the second half of Haven.

That Haven ace cleared the way for FUT's 13-7 win on Haven, but their Pearl win was even cleaner than that. FUT stole T1's pick while dropping just four rounds, keeping themselves alive with six clutches in the first half of the map alone. Comparatively, they only needed one clutch on Haven, and that was a 1v2 from qRaxs that kickstarted the map.

MOJJ dominated Pearl in qw1's absence, as the former downed 22 players for a 1.54 rating. His 231 ADR and 82% KAST were also unrivaled in the server, falling short in assists to AtaKaptan and entry kills to qw1.

Those two categories were exactly where both AtaKaptan and qw1 shone on Haven. The former racked up 20 assists on Omen, shooting him up the leaderboard despite having the second-least kills on his team. qw1 was on fire on Haven and totalled eight first kills, double what his teammates had all put together.

qw1 made quick work of T1.

Overall, the match was considered a close one by the VLR.gg Pick ‘Ems, and not even T1 expected such a lopsided performance today. When asked about their elimination match, T1's head coach Autumn could only stress how important fixing the mistakes they committed today was, as those issues could throw them out of Champions regardless of their opponent.

“It wasn't really about the confidence, or the aims, or the nerves. I guess we should have prepared a lot more. But I think FUT performed way better than we expected as well,” Autumn admitted. “But you know, as a pro player, everyone has to prove themselves on the stage as well. We didn't perform that well today and I think I'm the one to take the blame.”

FUT huddle on stage Two months ago, FUT were about to pack their bags. Now, who knows? (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)

FUT, meanwhile, are left to contend with the odds. They return to the server tomorrow, when they will face Evil Geniuses Evil Geniuses North America Rank #22 Derrek Derrek Ha NaturE Nicholas Garrison supamen Phat Le icy Jacob Lange yay Jaccob Whiteaker or FunPlus Phoenix FunPlus Phoenix China Rank #5 Autumn Kale Dunne Life Qu Donghao (瞿东豪) AAAAY Zhang Yang (张杨) BerLIN Zhang Bolin (張柏霖) yosemite Wang Lei (王磊) . FUT have never played against FPX, but have a definite bone to pick with EG. At Masters Tokyo, FUT's opening match was a 2-0 loss to EG in the group stage.

“I feel like we gave a lot of ourselves in the previous match we played against them. And because of that, we lost the series,” AtaKaptan reflected. “Now we got a really strong, really clean victory against T1, so I think we will be stronger in the next match.”

But even still, the team is not hung up on that loss. Most of the mistakes FUT committed in Tokyo were also visible in EMEA, so the team will mostly rely on preparation and these past few months of hard work and maturity to, hopefully, take revenge against Evil Geniuses.

T1's next match is against the loser of the EG vs. FPX bout, on August 10. FUT play the winner of that match tomorrow.