A golden opportunity for both - FURIA vs Aurora preview

Neither of these teams will have a better shot at a Major final than this.

FURIA were the best team in the world going into the last Major, on paper, but completely bottled it - but now have a golden shot at redemption, and will feel like they have a very winnable semi-final. Aurora, similarly, will be looking at how 9z rattled FURIA and thinking that they are fallible and gettable-at, and starting to believe that the Major could be coming back to Turkiye.

Both of them are entirely correct. FURIA have yet to play anyone elite and probably should have lost to 9z in the quarter-final, but we know the quality they possess and most of the time are simply better than Aurora and better than most.

Aurora though are in good nick. We’ve not seen them win so easily on stage in a long time, and were superb in stage three, and thoroughly deserve their top four spot on current form. soulfly has been a revelation on this team, despite it going under-the-radar almost entirely, and we know what XANTARES and Wicadia can do.

The match-up

While Aurora were lucky enough to have the better AWPer against BetBoom, they will not have such luxuries in this quarter-final. molodoy is a fantastic sniper and a level above woxic right now, meaning the Turks do not have that to fall back on in this series.

Instead they must look towards their talisman, XANTARES, and Wicadia to do the business. Wicadia can be inconsistent but he’s very dangerous, and XANTARES can and does carry games through sheer force of will. The issue they’ll have, though, is that FURIA can match them rack for rack in terms of rifle firepower.

KSCERATO/YEKINDAR is at least as good if not better than Wicadia/XANTARES, with the big AWPing edge going to FURIA. It looks rough for Aurora.

They’ll need one of two things; either a outwitting of FalleN from MAJ3R, or an off-day from FURIA. The good news for them is that the latter has been happening a lot lately.

FURIA are one of the most entertaining teams in the world, but when molodoy is having a rough day they’re nowhere near as fun - or dangerous. YEKINDAR is notoriously quicksilver, too, which can leave the favourites completely stranded in terms of their aggressive pieces, which in turn neuters KSCERATO.

It seems wrong to suggest that you need a bad day from your opponents in order to win after we stated Aurora deserved to be in the semi-finals - but the truth is everyone needs an off-day from FURIA to beat them. When they were all in sync and at their peak, FURIA won events and took BO5s off of Vitality.

FURIA are not a super-consistent top tier team, they just have a very high floor because of KSCERATO, and an even higher ceiling because of molodoy. If molodoy shows up against Aurora it’s near-impossible for them to win, as they can’t match him AWP for AWP and they won’t be able to stop him with a rifle. Many have tried and failed.

Like most games he’s in, molodoy has the keys to win or lose this game.

Expectations

We do expect FURIA to move into the finals due to the fact they have the better AWPer, and the better AWPer usually wins.

There should be no way woxic can live with the aggression and multikill potential of molodoy, and MAJ3R hasn’t really proven himself a leader who can execute a plan to counter a player like that very often. KSCERATO is the safety net, and he’s one of the best players in the world - even better than anyone Aurora have.

Across the board they are outclassed - though soulfly probably nicks it over yuurih - and it doesn’t feel like Aurora have got the juice to squeeze past a FURIA team that is yet to hit the heights they’re capable of in Cologne yet. You just feel they’ll go up a gear today and blow Aurora away.

The Turkish team actually have a decent record against FURIA, but we just don’t trust them on stage. They do have the trump card of Dust 2, which is a bit of a sore map for FURIA and one of Aurora’s favourites, so we foresee a 2-1, but a FURIA win nonetheless.