Na’Vi takes the IEM Katowice 2020 crown in dominating fashion

The Intel ExtremeMasters (IEM) Katowice 2020 came to a thrilling conclusion over the weekend. For our local esports fans who don’t know yet, the Cloud9 CS:GO roster who qualified and participated in the tournament has two South African players on the squad, namely Johnny “JT” Theodosiou and Aran “Sonic” Groesbeek, as well as a South African coach Tiaan “T.c” Coertzen whom we interviewed in January. Here’s what went down at IEM Katowice 2020.

IEM Katowice 2020 winners

IEM Katowice 2020 was an amazing tournament to watch. However, the grand final was a bit one-sided, with Natus Vincere (Na’Vi) cleaning house in the playoffs. Na’Vi dominated the competition in the playoffs, not dropping a single map. Na’Vi first faced off against Team Liquid in the quarterfinals, which was arguably the closest match for Na’Vi, but they still managed to close it out 2-0.

In the semifinals, Na’Vi destroyed Astralis and then faced G2 Esports in the grand final. The grand final was, as mentioned earlier, a bit one-sided, with a final map score of 3-0. On Nuke, Na’Vi beat down G2 16-4, while the second map, Dust 2, Na’Vi scraped by with a 16-13 victory. The final map was just as much of a stomp as the first in the BO5 final, with Na’Vi claiming their trophy after defeating G2 16-2.

You can catch the highlights of the quarterfinals, semifinals and the grand final on the official ESL CS:GO YouTube channel in case you couldn’t watch the action live.

With the victory against G2 Esports, Na’Vi became the IEM Katowice 2020 champions, taking home the lion’s share ($250,000) of the $500,000 prize pool.

How did Cloud9 do?

South African esports fans were, without a doubt, shouting for Cloud9 at IEM Katowice 2020. As mentioned at the start of this article, there are two South African players in the squad, and their coach is also from South Africa. Unfortunately, this new Cloud9 roster didn’t make it to the playoffs of IEM Katowice 2020.

With that being said, the squad did do an excellent job qualifying for the tournament, which had just over 1 million viewers at its peak, setting a new record for IEM events and became the most popular non-Major event in the history of CS:GO.

Cloud9 faced some world-class competition in Group A, facing off against the frightening Astralis squad in the first round of the upper bracket. Astralis beat Cloud9 convincingly on Overpass with a score of 16-7, while on Train, Cloud9 pushed back but simply couldn’t secure the map win, as it went the way of Astralis 16-12.

With the loss against Astralis, Cloud9 dropped to the lower bracket of Group A, where they faced off against Ninjas in Pyjamas. NiP didn’t give Cloud9 an inch on the first map, Overpass, beating them down 16-2. With elimination looming, Cloud9 fought hard on Vertigo but failed to secure the win, with a final score of 16-7 going the way of NiP. With the loss, Cloud9 got eliminated from IEM Katowice 2020.

Catch some highlights from the Cloud9 matches below. While the team didn’t win, they did perform well against some extremely tough competition in NiP and Astralis, with the latter making it all the way to the semi-finals.

Header image via Eric Ananmalay