A year and a half after their last major tournament win, PSG Esports have won DreamHack Valencia. It’s the second trophy for the French duo of Victor “Ferra” Francal and Thibault “Chausette45” Grzesiak after also laying claim on DreamHack Leipzig 2018 in January of last year. But for their latest addition, the Danish Emil “fruity” Moselund, it’s his very first major trophy. Fruity debuted into professional Rocket League when he joined the French organization back in August. This completes a cycle of many promising results for the team who always fell short despite the potential.
Can’t believe it, what a series. So proud right now of the team. Dreamhack Champions 🏆
— fruity (@fruityl0l) July 7, 2019
The final day of DreamHack Valencia
Where there were 32 teams at the start of the weekend, only eight remained at the start of day three. Some of the top teams had already been eliminated. But the crème de la crème of Rocket League still stood there, ready to fight for the DreamHack title.
PSG had fought hard to make their way to the Grand Final. They reverse swept Cloud9 in fantastic fashion and took that momentum to The Bricks — who played with try-out Linus “Al0t” Möllergren — in the semi-final. Brushing them aside comfortably in a 4-1 win, only one more opponent stood in the way of a trophy they had wanted for so long: the American titans NRG.
The Grand Final
With NRG’s Jayson “Fireburner” Nunez having announced his retirement, DreamHack Valencia was his last shot at winning a major with the current line-up. Having lost out on the World Championship by a single goal back in Season 5, this was the final chance to lift a trophy with teammates Garrett “GarrettG” Gordon and Justin “jstn” Morales. NRG had reached the grand final, and the stars were aligned. The story had unfolded perfectly to end with Fireburner’s trophy in his very last tournament. But PSG said no.
NRG stood no chance against PSG’s momentum. Somehow, even after sweeping recent World Champions Renault Vitality and comfortably beating Complexity earlier in the day, PSG had risen to new levels to be a thorn in NRG’s side. And even though NRG won two games in the best-of-7, PSG managed to stay composed and closed out the series. That’s something they have struggled to do for over a year.
Perhaps this marks the beginning of a new era for PSG, now that they can deal with pressure and perform when it matters. Or perhaps it’s a testament to their inconsistency and we’ll see them back in the middle of the pack at DreamHack Montreal in September. Either way, PSG has shown they can do it. Now they just have to keep doing it.
You can find all other results and brackets over on Liquipedia’s event page.
