After multiple VALORANT Champions heartbreaks over the years, it feels as though the stars are finally aligning for Fnatic to win the only trophy missing from their collection. But their opponents in the upper bracket final — NRG — are on a fairytale run of their own.
Fnatic’s plot armour at VALORANT Champions 2025
Fnatic were hardly underdogs coming into Champs 2025. Though they’d been somewhat out of sorts towards the end of Stage 2, their Masters Toronto and Esports World Cup runners-up finishes showed that they can compete with the best, unsurprising given the talent on the roster.
Their 2-0 breeze through the group stage wasn’t too surprising then either.
RRQ perhaps gave them an easier ride than expected, though the Pacific second seed was once again lacklustre during global competition, as they were in Toronto. MIBR was slightly tougher, though such is their reliance on elite performances from aspas that as soon as he had a quiet map three, the series was Fnatic’s for the taking.
It wasn’t until the knockouts that Fnatic’s run appeared to have a magic touc. DRX was an opponent that, like Fnatic, hadn’t looked at the peak leading up to Champions, but two wins against Team Liquid showed that they were there to compete.
When they started 10-1 up on attack against Fnatic then — those 10 rounds coming back-to-back — it appeared they’d start off the upper bracket series in the perfect manner. While Haven is thought of as an attack-sided map, such a stark contrast between halves was certainly abnormal.
Fnatic came out of the switch 2-10 down, defeat all but guaranteed. But inspired performances from kaajak and Alfajer led them to win 11 of the next 12 rounds to complete an astonishing comeback and clinch the opening map 13-11.
Though Fnatic faltered to a 13-8 loss in map two, DRX ran out of steam on the decider while Alfajer continued to pop off. A 13-5 win moved the EMEA side on to a Toronto rematch with Paper Rex.
Fnatic’s win against PRX sounds too ridiculous to be true. They were up against the tournament favourites who bested them in the Masters Toronto finals, and were without their best-performing player Alfajer due to a sudden last-minute illness, grabbing Doma as a makeshift emergency substitute with hours until the match.
After starting the series 0-1, the fact that they won the second map to tie things 1-1 was a shock. But their comeback on map three was beyond reasonable.
At 9-1 down, a PRX win seemed inevitable; the Pacific champions were to move on, knocking Fnatic down to the lower bracket in what was to be an unlucky series loss where the result was unfortunately cemented due to a situation out of anyone’s control.
So Fnatic’s 12 back-to-back rounds wins were rather unexpected, to say the least. Round after round, the comeback looked more and more likely, as Fnatic’s players began to believe and grew both in confidence and emotion.
His usual on-stage antics are hardly muted, but Boaster’s reactions to winning rounds were dramatic, even for him. Gutteral screams from Fnatic’s men were animalistic — they’d tapped into a new wavelength which they harnessed all the way to victory.
Such was the emotion from the win, and all that transpired in the previous 24 hours, that Chronicle was even brought to tears, an entirely new side to the player not before seen.
The community reaction to the turnaround victory was at the level you’d expect when a team has won the grand final. It felt like Fnatic had just won a grand final.
It feels like they’re destined to win the grand final.
NRG’s own fairytale run
Just qualifying for VALORANT Champions 2025 was a respectable achievement for NRG. The same can be said for most orgs; after all, the majority of teams in the VCT circuit do not get to attend. However, it’s particularly impressive for NRG given the rest of their season.
Back-to-back 7th-8th finishes in Americas at Kickoff and Stage 1 saw NRG whimper through the first half of their year. The Kickoff result triggered changes, coach bonkar being benched and Verno shipped off to MIBR, replaced by brawk.
Stage 1 triggered more movement, legendary IGL FNS retiring as skuba joined. Bonkar then regained head coaching responsibilities, and so began NRG’s charge to Champs.
Little was expected of them in Stage 2. Brawk and skuba, as well as mada, were all appearing in tier one for the first time with NRG, and the prior finishes meant that expectations for the team were at an all-time low.
Even winning their group with a 4-1 record could somewhat be explained away; their group was the easier of the two. Then their immediate upper bracket loss to G2 looked like normal service resuming — before their lower bracket run.
The win against Cloud9 bred confidence again and, crucially, booked them a spot in Paris. A 3-1 victory over Sentinels to reach the Americas final was the icing on the cake, though their eventual defeat to G2 brought them back to reality.
They then entered Champs in the group of death alongside DRX, Team Liquid, and holders EDward Gaming. Then, their successive wins over DRX and EDG booked them a knockout spot as the group’s top seed. NRG were making their mark.
Their upper bracket draw was kind, avoiding the tournament favourites. GX was the perfect first opponent — another team that had qualified against the odds and one that most of the top teams would be more than happy to draw in the competition.
NRG dispatched them. Map one, Haven, 13-1. Brawk 18/1. This was a new side to NRG, they stormed through GIANTX.
Map two, while slightly more competitive, was still a walk in the park for the Americans, closing 13-5 to move on through the upper bracket.
MIBR was then a completely different ask. Playing into aspas is never a nice prospect, let alone when he’s literally setting the VCT global kill record, dropping 80 frags. MIBR even won the most rounds across the series, 41 to NRG’s 36, and no member of the Americas’ runners-up squad even ended the best-of-three with a positive KD.
Yet somehow NRG held on. Map one and three victories were secured through overtime, completing a stunning 2-1 win to set up their Fnatic clash.
While they have had their moments of brilliance, NRG’s run has shown one quality more than any other: grit. They do not and will not give up, having defied expectations at every step to reach this point. Now, they need only defy the odds twice more.
