FUT win marquee trophy in Bucharest to underline their atmospheric rise

FUT get their proof-of-concept win at PGL Bucharest with an emphatic win over Astralis.

The rise of FUT has been one of the stories of the last 12 months as so many teams seemed to tread water, and this is the first time they've really looked like they can be contenders at the top level - and if nothing else, they've got a trophy they'll remember forever.

They have gone from strength to strength, but a grand final win over what is an impressive Astralis team (third in VRS rankings, much to HooXi's confusion) is a sign that they might just have made the leap to a top team at a time when many of the other top five teams are spluttering and faltering less than two months before the Major.

It's all coming up FUT.

A group stage win over PARIVISION, semi-final win over The MongolZ and the aforementioned grand final win with only one map dropped is mightily impressive, and completing it with a 13-3 win on Dust 2 was the cherry on top.

dem0n and cmtry are not the stars of this team, but in the grand final both levelled up to sink Astralis in the big moments. Both ended up 16-7 on Ancient as Astralis struggled to break through the FUT defence. When cmtry found eight with a 4k under pressure when he really shouldn't have been able to, the writing was on the wall.

cmtry even ended the event with an MVP, which runs contrary to us this week suggesting his replacement. Oops.

Something very impressive about this win is that FUT were excellent on both sides; it was a monstrous T side that sliced through Astralis to collect an eight round lead at the half, and a new name at the top of the scoreboard in lauNX.

Map three was a bit of a blip, with lauNX turning into cannon fodder, seemingly dying at will, with over a third of his 21 deaths being opening deaths. That it was a 30-round game with FUT only getting six opening kills is testament to their resilience and how much better they were than Astralis today.

It took a superhuman performance from Staehr just to get Astralis over the line.

Fortunately for FUT, dem0n hit back with a ridiculous showing of his own to close out the series and bring FUT to their trophy and end what was a phenomenal series from him.

He went 25-6 in just 16 rounds, with eight multikills and four opening kills, with Astralis never even getting into the game.

We're constantly looking for challengers to Vitality's throne, and while FUT aren't there yet, at their rate of improvement they've got as good a shot as anyone else, which admittedly is quite a low bar right now.

Congratulations, FUT!