Team Liquid have qualified for the pinnacle of Valorant esports – Valorant Champions – after winning the EMEA Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ) this evening.
They beat UK esports org Guild’s all-Swedish roster 3-1 in the grand final to progress to Champions.
Guild made a strong lower-bracket run after being beaten 2-0 by Liquid earlier in the tournament, but despite a valiant effort to push the final match to a fifth game, couldn’t pull through.
The result means that Liquid join the likes of Fnatic, Sentinels, Gambit, Acend and more at Valorant Champions this December in Berlin.
Champions is the final stage in the 2021 Valorant Champions Tour (VCT), following the various Challengers and Masters events throughout the year. It will feature the top 16 teams in the world and will crown a single global champion.
Team Liquid have two UK players – soulcas and L1NK – and two Belgian players in brothers Scream and Nivera, as well as Finnish player Jamppi.
Nivera was brought in a few weeks ago after Kryptix stepped away temporarily for personal reasons.
Nivera told British host Yinsu Collins after the win (at around 4:14:00): “It feels so good [to make it to Champions in my debut tournament]. This victory is just amazing, I’m probably going to cry in my bed! It’s so crazy.
“It’s my first tournament – I’ve been playing with Liquid for only three weeks and I’ve been playing Valorant for five or six months, so I’m still new to the game, but I’m a fast learner and have a lot of experience from CSGO. First tournament, first win, it’s crazy!”
Scream, when asked by Yinsu what it’s been like to play with his brother in such an important tournament, replied: “It means a lot, he’s my little brother so we obviously have history together. But it’s a dream come true, for both of us.
“We brought my brother in not long ago, things were good with Kryptix, but having my brother I think helps us in a lot of situations. He’s very calm, smart and has some experience, and it feels good to play good. It’s how we want to play.”
Scream and Nivera are of course former CSGO pro players.
Elsewhere, Guild will no longer be participating in the next Valorant Red Bull Home Ground event this year – Navi will be taking their place instead. Esports News UK understands Guild will be moving to a review stage for their Valorant team/operations.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
