The South American team defeated Team Liquid with a clean sweep in their opening match.
Group A’s opening matches are over for Champions Istanbul, with the four teams completing their tournament's first match. After the explosive match-up between Paper Rex and EDward Gaming, it was Leviatán and Team Liquid’s turn to battle each other in their group stage match.
The meeting started with Haven, where Leviatán immediately went on the offensive, not giving Liquid room to breathe as they pulled a back-to-back winning streak before the latter can even grab their first win. The ping-ponging continued until the end of the first half when Leviatán led with a 3-point lead. In the second half, Team Liquid seems to catch a second wind – however, it wasn’t enough to catch up with Leviatán, who won the first map.
Ascent was the second map played in this match-up, and the story was almost similar here. The biggest difference however was Team Liquid managed to achieve parity with Leviatán by the end of the first half with a 6-6-win count. The second half is where we saw Leviatán press their advantage as the defending side. Their defence was pretty good, only letting Team Liquid grab four wins. However, TL’s effort wasn’t sufficient for them to overcome the points difference as Leviatán easily picked up 6 wins in the second half to win the overall match 2-0.
The win means that Leviatán now stands at the top of the Group A standings, and they will be meeting Paper Rex in the Winners’ match about 12 hours from the publication of this article. Team Liquid meanwhile will be facing EDward Gaming in the elimination match on 4 September to see which team will be the first team heading home from the tournament.
VCT Champions Istanbul is happening from 31 August until 18 September in Istanbul, with the Playoffs set to be played in front of a live audience at Volkswagen Arena from 9 September 2022.
