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Zechs Files: Why El Clasico Still Matters

SK's win over Fnatic at Dreamhack is just the latest chapter in one of the longest stories esports has to offer.

It’s been dubbed El Clasico of esports. Fnatic vs SK Gaming is one of the oldest rivalries in this young sport of ours, dating all the way back to Counter-Strike 1.6 and covering almost as many games as years.
 
Nowadays it's a friendly rivalry, but, in days gone by, the rivalry was much fiercer. I remember covering an IEM event for SK Gaming’s website where we asked Hafu - then a WoW player for Fnatic - for an interview. She agreed but later told us that she wasn’t allowed to do interviews with SK. I can only imagine that kind of bickering is a thing of the past, but it shows how deep the animosity once ran.
 
Then of course there was the Gux transfer debacle. Rasmus "Gux" Ståhl left Fnatic early in 2010 and was picked up by SK. Over the years, a number of players had played for both teams and caused no issues. But after ESWC in July of 2010, Fnatic’s players decided they wanted Gux back. SK with Gux finished 2nd at the event, losing 2-1 in the final at the hands of Na'Vi, while Fnatic were only able to place 5-8. Fnatic were able to re-sign the Swede and SK were left reeling, and played without an official 5th player for several months.

 

Rasmus "Gux" Ståhl

From there, things only got worse. SK retaliated by signing Get_Right and f0rest, gutting a team that had won multiple championships together. In-game, the two teams have a storied history, too, as you would expect from two such long-standing organisations. Both teams were among the most successful in the 1.6 era, which meant that not only did they meet often, they met at the business end of most tournaments. ESL bestowed “classic” status on two SK vs Fnatic matches from the 1.6 era of IEM: the semi final of IEM Dubai 2009 and the grand final of IEM Chengdu 2009. Rest assured, though, a quick youtube search will find you plenty more great games between these two juggernauts of the game.
 
Indeed, the SK/Fnatic struggle has also given us some of esports’ greatest moments, not just Counter-Strike's. The obvious one to any League fan is the infamous, by now borderline cliché xPeke backdoor at a very different IEM. Where else in esports have you seen a player crying over a defeat? It’s not unheard of, but it’s very rare. Even now, if you mention xPeke it’s Fnatic, not Origen that springs to mind.
 
In more recent years, Fnatic have continued to be a leading light in European League of Legends, while SK decided to switch direction altogether. Both teams have had their peaks and troughs in CS:GO, and yesterday’s Dreamhack grand final put SK 5-4 up in overall matches. A lot of those games featured very different line-ups but the point stands: these two organisations are still impossible to separate. It was typical, then, that the game went to three maps.
 
The current iterations of SK and Fnatic’s CS teams have been trying to make somewhat of a comeback in recent months. SK dominated 2016, winning back-to-back majors, albeit under a different name for the first one. Fnatic did the same thing in 2015, but until yesterday, it had been a fairly lean 2017 for both them by comparison. SK have fared reasonably well, results-wise this year, but haven’t come close to replicating their 2016 form. Dreamhack, though less prestigious than a Major, and with a less impressive line-up of teams, offered some redemption to two teams who at different times ran rampant across the field of Counter-Strike.
 
Weirdly enough, despite their eventual defeat, Dreamhack may have been more important to Fnatic than it was to SK. Yes, SK has been brought down a peg after an absurd 2016 but they still have tournament wins under their belt in 2017. Fnatic hasn’t won anything in a long time and is just now showing signs of emerging from a rut that goes back to March 2016. Their last top two finish was ELeague in July of that year, meaning it’s almost a year since Fnatic even reached a grand final. Remembering what it’s like to get that close could be an important wake-up call for a once great team. For SK, meanwhile, it was simply another in a long line of successes at mid-tier tournaments.
 
The SK-Fnatic rivalry in 2017 is very different to what it once was. Both names remain synonymous with esports, even if neither is quite the titan they once were. The animosity from the 1.6 era is all but gone now, but, whenever the teams meet, whatever the game being played, there will always be an inescapable sense of history.

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