FURIA fend off Wildcard in IEM Katowice 2025
FURIA are through to IEM Katowice 2025 Stage 2 following a nailbiter victory against Wildcard. The first two maps of the series were extremely one-sided, while Nuke was nothing but an entertaining map that could have gone both ways.
Wildcard started the series in the best way possible as they steamrolled FURIA on Inferno. The North Americans pulled out a true T-side masterclass to crush FURIA's defense. Nobody hard-carried like Joshua "JBa" Barutt did against BIG on Wednesday, instead, everyone had their moments.
There was no way for FURIA to claw their way back to the game after losing the first half by 11-1, and Wildcard secured the map after conceding only three rounds in the second half.
Wildcard didn't keep up with the momentum on Dust2, though. FURIA recovered and delivered yet another solid performance on Dust2, which has been their best map lately.
While the first half was balanced, FURIA put up a flawless performance as Counter-Terrorists in the second half, forcing the series to move on to Nuke.
Wildcard's promising start on Nuke was crushed soon as FURIA won an eco in the third round with just one Scout on the CT-side. The back-and-forth carried on for the remainder of the first half, which left the game open to both teams.
The madness carried on in the second half as FURIA won three crucial rounds with a scrappy economy thanks to Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo and Kaike "KSCERATO" Cerato thriving in tense clutches. Wildcard, however, didn't give up and forced overtime despite playing mostly with Tec-9s and Galils in the final two rounds of regulation.
FURIA were the better team during the overtime and won by 16-13.
WildcardFURIA| Wildcard |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Aran 'Sonic' Groesbeek |
55 - 44 | +11 | 87.3 | 71.9% | 1.18 |
 Josh 'JBa' Barutt |
42 - 35 | +7 | 65.3 | 84.4% | 1.04 |
 Love 'phzy' Smidebrant |
43 - 41 | +2 | 65.5 | 71.9% | 1.03 |
| Tim 'susp' Ångström |
35 - 45 | -10 | 79.0 | 73.4% | 1.02 |
 Peter 'stanislaw' Jarguz |
37 - 47 | -10 | 58.9 | 73.4% | 0.83 |
| FURIA |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Kaike 'KSCERATO' Cerato |
56 - 46 | +10 | 104.4 | 71.9% | 1.33 |
| Felipe 'skullz' Medeiros |
47 - 44 | +3 | 87.4 | 79.7% | 1.16 |
| Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo |
41 - 42 | -1 | 61.3 | 68.8% | 0.93 |
| Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes |
33 - 43 | -10 | 68.3 | 68.8% | 0.92 |
| Yuri 'yuurih' Santos |
34 - 37 | -3 | 56.6 | 75.0% | 0.89 |
This defeat isn't the end of the world for Wildcard as they'll come back to the server later to play versus Liquid and try to qualify for IEM Katowice Stage 2.
