The European VALORANT Champions Tour Stage 2 Challengers 2 teams are locked in, meaning only eight teams still have a chance to qualify for two Challengers playoffs slots and represent the European, Turkish and CIS Regions at Master 2.
While FunPlus Phoenix and Guild Esports qualified previously, the playoff field is already crowded with top teams from the three regions. Here are the VCT Challengers 2 teams.
The old guard return, Team Liquid and G2 Esports
Team Liquid and G2 Esports have not had a great start to the VCT era. Both teams were highly rated in the Ignition Series and First Strike, but neither made waves at Challengers events or qualified for Masters 1. Team Liquid failed at the round of 16 twice and lost to FPX in the quarterfinals of the Stage 1 Challengers events.
Dude @Jamppicsgo is just on fire today pic.twitter.com/0AKqeTq65g
— Team Liquid Valorant (@LiquidValorant) April 12, 2021
G2 were slightly closer to Masters glory, bombing out of each Challengers event in the quarterfinals, just one series win away from qualification. Now, both are finally in the main event. G2 went through First Strike winners and Masters 1 finalist Team Heretics to make it to this tournament. Team Liquid battled Entropiq and Alliance en route to Challengers 2.
Fnatic and the new kids, CE Calling
Fnatic are in the same boat as G2 and Team Liquid: a heralded squad with sparse results up to this point. They were knocked out of every Challengers event at the quarterfinal stage and seemingly hit a wall results-wise. Even at the first VCT Stage 2 Challengers event, the team struggled. They lost to Alliance 0-2 and decided to switch things up.
Fnatic brought in two new players, and the new blood injected some life into the team. The First Strike finalists breezed through the qualification stage, only dropping a map to Acend for seeding.
What a way to introduce yourself to the Black and Orange @just_magnum 🔥
We move on to Top 8 to play the defending Masters Champion @AcendClub
📺 https://t.co/puyWtogwbS pic.twitter.com/T8UEopt3pB— FNATIC (@FNATIC) April 12, 2021
CE Calling, or Animemix, are the newest team to enter the VCT Challengers field. The unsigned German squad has only been around since March and are not as hyped as some of the other unsigned European squads, like HONK. Their potential is unknown, but they produced some highlights during their qualification games. For example, they beat the Hungarian squad HEET 2-1 with a massive attacking half on Bind to close out the series. The team won 10 straight rounds to end the game after going into the half down 2-10.
Attacker Team?! pic.twitter.com/jpuhzisuu9
— CE Calling (@CE_Calling) April 12, 2021
The rest of the VCT Challengers 2 teams
Your #VALORANTChallengers EU Stage 2 Week 2 teams.
– @NIPGaming
– @LiquidValorant
– @G2esports
– @TeamVitality
– @Opportunists_
– Animemix
– @AcendClub
– @FNATIC— VALORANT Champions Tour EMEA (@valesports_emea) April 12, 2021
The rest of the field is not as exciting as the qualifying teams above. The four other teams that make up the event all attended Challengers 1.
Team Vitality and Acend both lost in the first round and may want to prove themselves. Opportunists and NiP both made it to the semi finals but fell short to the two finalists, FPX and Guild. All four teams had to battle through open qualifiers again but made it back for a chance at Challengers Playoffs and eventually Masters 2 in Iceland.
