Na’Vi dominate G2 to win IEM Katowice: Results and Final Placements

Despite the lack of a crowd, the Intel Extreme Masters Season XIV CS:GO World Championship delivered plenty of excitement, as two teams clashed in the best-of-five grand finals for $250,000 and their first win in this year’s Intel Grand Slam. Here are the final results and placements.

Sixteen teams from invites, qualifiers, and victories at other IEM events arrived in Katowice with the expectations of advancing through the group stage and playing in front of the rabid crowd in the Spodek Arena.

Unfortunately for those players, that didn’t happen as the Katowice regional government announced just before the start of playoffs that they were retracting their decision to host a large mass of people inside the arena, citing “global health concerns” in the wake of the Coronavirus scare.

But despite the missing crowd, the show went on, and the competing teams put on an exciting display of professional Counter-Strike action.

Recap

There was a definite lack of upsets early in the group stage, as most of the higher-ranked teams breezed through the stage into playoff contention. Astralis made quick 2-0 work of Cloud9, Vitality, and Fnatic to earn a semifinals berth. Both Na’Vi and G2 Esports continued their momentum from their first-place finishes at BLAST Premier Spring.

100 Thieves were the biggest surprise of the group stage; after getting bodied 2-0 by G2 in their first series, they won three straight series to advance to playoffs, including two reverse-sweeps against Evil Geniuses and mousesports.

In playoffs, the two most consistent looking teams found their way to the grand finals. Na’Vi’s star Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev catapulted his team into the grand finals with a win over Team Liquid and a stomping of Astralis unlike we’d ever seen happen to the Danes. G2 advanced over Fnatic in a hard-fought series.

• Read more: S1mple explains why current Na’Vi CSGO lineup is the “best” ever

In the grand finals, Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov went insane on G2’s pick of Nuke in map one, dropping 28 kills in just one half. He finished with 32 total as Na’Vi rolled over the French side 16-4. Both teams traded clutches in a back-and-forth map two on Dust 2, but again Na’Vi prevailed to take a 2-0 series lead. Na’Vi dominated G2 on another of their map picks, Mirage, with a 16-2 scoreline to sweep the grand finals and claim the trophy.

Brackets

Playoffs

Group A

Group B

Final Placements

To see all match results in full, plus interviews with players, coaches and staff from the event, check out our IEM Katowice event hub.