Fnatic and FunPlus Phoenix have become the first teams in the world to guarantee their slot at Stage 1: Masters Reykjavik.

The two upper bracket semifinals were played today in Stage 1: EMEA Challengers. As the region was awarded with three slots for Stage 1: Masters Reykjavik, a win today guaranteed, at worst, third seed.

Fnatic were the first to secure their slot, winning a long and hard-fought match against M3 Champions M3 Champions Inactive Jady Yaroslav Nikolaev purp0 Semyon Borchev Chronicle Timofey Khromov Redgar Igor Vlasov . FPX followed suit, winning a historic series over Team Liquid Team Liquid Europe Rank #22 paTiTek Patryk Fabrowski kamyk Maks Rychlewski nAts Ayaz Akhmetshin Keiko Georgio Sanassy kamo Kamil Frąckowiak .

Fnatic vs. M3 Champions (FNC 2-1)

The opener match was as poetic as one could make it. Prior to today, Fnatic and M3 Champions had only played each other once, in May 2021, with the former taking a calm win. A Masters Reykjavik slot was on the line then and a Masters Reykjavik slot was on the line now. There was only one difference: whoever lost today had one more chance to reach the LAN tournament.

"We had two prepped bans. But they banned Icebox and we were like 'do we pick Haven? We haven't actually pracced it this week because we didn't think they'd ban it,'" Jake "Boaster" Howlett said on the broadcast interview. "'So should we just go Fracture and hopefully we'll win that?' It kind of worked out. We were like ‘yeah, we've got some stuff on Fracture. Let's just do it.'"

Fnatic decided to start the match on Fracture, taking the first two rounds. M3 Champions replied back with two of their own. Fnatic then jumped ahead 4-2, which prompted a timeout from their Russian opponents. James "Mistic" Orfila and Boaster didn't seem to care, giving their team the fifth and sixth point, respectively.

That shot hit... right?

Mistic clutched against Timofey "Chronicle" Khromov and Nikita "d3ffo" Sudakov on B, defusing with just a second left, while Boaster stopped a take on the same site by knocking out three while stunned. Some flashy Sheriff shots from d3ffo put M3 Champions at 6-3, with a quick and clean round from Fnatic assuring the half win. But M3C didn't allow their opponents to run away with the score, keeping the half close with a 7-5 result.

Switching to defense, Ayaz "nAts" Akhmetshin helped his team secure the pistol round followed by another round, prompting a timeout from M3 Champions. What followed was a string of back-and-forth rounds, with simple and clean rounds from M3C keeping them alive, while Fnatic resorted to several clutch wins.

After M3C's timeout, Fnatic found the eighth round. M3C ran down the clock and kept it 8-8. It looked like the Russian players were about to run away with the score, but an unpredictable 1v4 from Boaster within his Viper's Pit kept them ahead. Martin "MAGNUM" Penkov then won another clutch round against three, but M3 Champions replied with two to jump ahead at 11-10. Fnatic called a timeout and found the three final rounds of regulation in a row, winning their pick 13-11.

"Are we the kings of Fracture? Nah," Boaster told the stream. "We just have that 100% win rate. I like a 100% win rate. Maybe we won't play it at Masters just so we can keep that. Nah, I'd say we're decent at it but we lose every scrim so I don't know what's going on there."

Bogdan "sheydos" Naumov came out swinging on Bind, opening up the map with an ace. His team managed one more round, but Fnatic won the first gun round. The Boaster-led squad snowballed that into four more points, taking a 5-2 lead. M3 Champions held Fnatic at bay for the entirety of round eight, enabling them their third point and starting a comeback. Sheydos sealed the half with a 1v3 clutch on the B site, as M3C went from a 5-2 disadvantage to a 7-5 half win.

The second pistol round became an all-out brawl, but M3 Champions managed to find that round and the next. Fnatic held back an A retake to win the first gun round of the second half, but dropped the next two rounds as M3 Champions reached 11-6.

Fnatic called a timeout to keep themselves in the game, but seemed to be fighting an uphill battle, taking just two more rounds before the map ended 13-8. With the series tied up the teams moved to Split, a map both teams had seldom played recently.

Despite finishing Bind with a negative KD, Igor "Redgar" Vlasov's Skye still found a 90% KAST with 12 assists, second only to Mistic's 12.

Winning a 1v4 off of intuition alone isn't an easy feat.

Nikita "Derke" Sirmitev seemed to take the Bind loss personally, opening up Split with a pistol ace. Fnatic won one more point, with Derke then bagging a 3K to give his team a third round. M3 Champions found two rounds, but Fnatic chained another three to go 6-2. This pattern repeated, as the Russians found their third point just prior to a three-round streak that ended the half 9-3 in Fnatic's favor.

Despite having only two flashy rounds, Derke was an integral part of Fnatic's success in the first half. While most of Fnatic ended the first half with six kills, Derke took down 19 players all by himself.

A B-site hold put Fnatic on double digits, but symptoms of the fabled 9-3 curse soon appeared. Fnatic let slip four rounds in a row. Redgar clutched against two with a Shorty on round 14, winning M3C's first second half round, and d3ffo's Neon's Fast Lane fried two players on the A site on round 16. Soon after, Fnatic called a timeout to try and put a stop to M3 Champions' streak, winning two rounds that put them at 12-7.

This is the first and last time you'll see this happen.

M3 Champions refused to go down without a fight, bagging the next five rounds. nAts took down four on B Heaven to reach double digits. On round 23, Fnatic saved for the final round of regulation, but their efforts were in vain. Sheydos sprayed three down on a B take that tipped the match into overtime.

Fnatic won the series 23-21 after a grueling overtime. Several flashy plays dotted the extra rounds, but braveaf stood out, preventing d3ffo from defusing a game-winning Spike by 0.02 seconds.

By the time Split ended, both sides' numbers were astronomical. nAts went from two kills in the first half to 33 by the time the map had ended. Derke, however, was firing on all cylinders and closed out the series with 82 kills on Raze.

"Let's just say I've got a pulled hamstring. I'm at least 54 now. At 19-19, honestly, I was like 'you know what? I'm okay with losing' and we just kept going," Boaster said between laughter.

With this win, Fnatic repeated their 2021 feat and secured a win over Redgar's men to secure the first Reykjavik slot.

"If KRÜ qualify and they go, I want to take them to the candy shop," Boaster said. "We're a better team now, we've progressed, we've been going to the gym as you can see."

At one point, 0.02 seconds stood between M3C and Reykjavik.

FunPlus Phoenix vs. Team Liquid (FPX 2-0)

Despite a four-hour long best-of-three game, VCT EMEA had one more game on the schedule. FPX and Team Liquid faced each other for the second time this year. Last time they played, on March 12, FPX took a comfortable 2-0 win.

If Liquid won this match, it would mark a seamless repeat of 2021; they would qualify to Masters Reykjavik alongside Fnatic.

For the fourth time this split, FPX entered the server with Kamil "baddyG" Graniczka standing in for Kyrylo "ANGE1" Karasov.

Liquid hit the ground running with a 3-1 scoreline, one that FPX quickly turned around. After winning their second round, FPX called a timeout and placed themselves at a 4-3 advantage. At that point, Liquid called their own timeout, afterwards tying the half after a clinical 1v2 clutch from Elias "Jamppi" Olkkonen.

A long period of back and forth ensued, with neither team finding an advantage greater than two rounds. Once FPX hit double digits at 10-8, Liquid called a timeout that reeled the result back in to 10-10. From there, FPX had no troubles in closing out the map 13-10.

Despite losing their pick, Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom was one of two players with a positive KD on Liquid.

Haven started in the exact same way Split did, with Liquid taking a 3-1 lead. FPX won an eco round and followed that up with a flawless, flourishing their economy and prompting a timeout from Liquid.

The timeout left FPX unfazed, as they won three more rounds, placing them at 6-3. Liquid scored one more round and FPX called their own timeout, furthering themselves to a 7-5 at halftime.

Now on defense, Liquid equalized the score to 7-7. As the full buys came out, FPX chained together three rounds to reach double digits. Liquid found one round due to a 3K from Nabil "Nivera" Benrlitom, but FPX replied with two more points. ScreaM took the heads off of three FPX players for Liquid's ninth round, triggering a second timeout from FPX. Soon after, they wrapped the game up 13-8.

Today's win was a historic one for FPX. Previously one of the best squads of Europe during the Ignition Series, the squad took a big hit in 2021 and failed to live up to expectations several times. Today, they have booked their tickets to their first-ever LAN, in Reykjavik.

"Last year, we would do very well in all the qualifiers and regional tournaments but when it came to the big games we weren't really performing right. We made some key changes to our roles to help our win conditions in officials," Carl "Erik" Erik Victor William Sandgren said in the post-match interview. "Getting a Jett player, figuring out the different dynamics in the team, and these are all things that will help you win officials instead of just winning scrims and going all-out theoreticals. We focused more on that and I think it paid off."

Ardiis shone for FPX today, dropping 44 players with 300 ACS and nearly 200 ADR. The Latvian player also opened up 11 rounds, praised by the casters for his ability to create space for FPX.

"I can't describe my feelings right now. We've been through so many hardships, especially during these last months with a lot of things going on," d00mbr0s said. "Even with all the hardships, we pulled through, we worked hard and we showed results. I'm just happy for me, but I'm more happy for my players. They've been dreaming about this for a year now. So yeah, I'm just very, very relieved and happy."

Of ardiis 11 opening kills, eight were on Haven.

Looking ahead

Tomorrow, the first two VCT EMEA elimination matches will be played. The losers are out of the tournament. The winners will fight amongst themselves on Friday, March 25, for the final EMEA Masters Reykjavik slot.

Tomorrow's VCT EMEA matches are: