‘Eleague’ Week 4 Finals Preview: Olofmeister Returns As Fnatic Take On Faze Clan

There was some concern at the start of “ELeague” that Olof “Olofmeister,” arguably the best “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” player, would miss the televised eSports tournament with a hand injury. After taking just over a month off, Olofmeister is back, which is good news for fans and great news for his team, Fnatic, as it takes on Faze Clan in the week 4 finals Friday, which will be broadcast on TNT beginning at 10 p.m. EDT.

A dominant 2015 that saw Fnatic win almost every tournament carried over into 2016 with a victory at the Intel Extreme Masters X-World Championship in March. Since then, Fnatic has had to take a back seat to teams such as Luminosity, which secured its position as the best team in the world with wins at the MLG Major Championship: Columbus, DreamHack Austin 2016 and the ESL Pro League Season 3 Finals.

Olofmeister's injury has kept him on the sidelines since the beginning of April, but he returned to Fnatic at the start of “ELeague” week 4. With their star player, Fnatic went 3-1 before the weekly semifinal. Fnatic beat Team SoloMid 2-0 in their first match of group play. In their third group match, Fnatic beat Faze Club 16-0 in a best-of-30 round format. Fnatic would drop the next match 16-8 to Faze Clan. Fnatic would sweep Dignitas 2-0 to take the top spot in Group D. In the weekly semifinal, Fnatic beat Team SoloMid 2-1 to advance to Friday's live competition on TNT.

Faze Clan continued their strong run of play by dropping only one match in group play. Faze Clan finished behind Fnatic, due to the tiebreaker, to set up a match against Dignitas in the weekly semifinals. After winning the first match 17-10, Faze Clan dropped the second set in a close 16-14 match. The deciding match was just as close, with Faze Club narrowly defeating Dignitas 16-14.

After splitting their group play matches, Fnatic and Faze Clan will compete once again Friday to advance to the “ELeague”playoffs. The winner will join Astralis, Luminosity and Ninjas in Pyjamas in the playoffs. The loser will have one more chance to advance in the Last Chance Qualifier round.