Playing without Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov in the group stage, Cloud9 debuted new additions Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy without success in their opening match.

fnatic sent Cloud9 to the Group A lower bracket at IEM Cologne after a hard-fought three-map series.

Christopher "⁠dexter⁠" Nong and company move on in the upper bracket to face the winner of ENCE vs. 9INE, while Cloud9 will play against the loser of the same game, both matches taking place on Sunday at 19:30 .

dexter's nervous first words in an interview on the broadcast summed up the match perfectly: "A good, stressful game, nice, a lot of mistakes," he blurted out, still visibly high on adrenaline. "You just gotta enjoy the stress at this level [sighs]."

The two teams exchanged each other's map picks, with fnatic unable to capitalize on a Vertigo pick they likely thought would be a weak map for Cloud9 given the newest additions electroNic and Perfecto had had it as a permaban in NAVI. However, big performances from Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov in the early stages and Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov in th closing ensured a close affair on the opener went Cloud9's way.

fnatic returned the favor on Anubis, where Cloud9 were clearly missing Ax1Le's impact as Timur "⁠buster⁠" Tulepov was nowhere to be seen. The pick came as a surprise, but dexter offered an explanation saying Cloud9 had destroyed them in practice on the map.

buster, who is temporarily stepping back into the team after Ax1Le was sidelined by visa issues, had a resurgence on Ancient, but it wasn't enough as a back-and-forth brawl went fnatic's way in overtime.

Aurélien "⁠afro⁠" Drapier's aggressive AWPing was on full display, as one of the new additions to fnatic ended the final map on 33 kills.