Update (March 28th 2022): Riot Games has announced that Team Liquid will join Fnatic and G2 in Iceland for the Valorant Masters LAN, replacing FunPlus Phoenix.
The official Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) EMEA Twitter account tweeted out the following this morning, saying that due to travel restrictions in Ukraine and Russia, and Covid regulations, FPX would not be able to field a full roster:
Both Fnatic and Team Liquid have UK players in their rosters (Boaster and Mistic on Fnatic and L1nk and Soulcas on Liquid).
FPX features players from Ukraine, Russia, Latvia and Sweden. FPX said they tried to reach a solution and that their player Ardiis is recovering from covid.
Liquid finished fourth in Challengers, with Fnatic third, G2 second and FPX first.
Original article (March 23rd 2022): London-based esports organisation Fnatic and China’s FunPlus Phoenix have become the first teams to qualify for the 2022 Valorant VCT Stage 1 Masters LAN, which is taking place in Iceland next month.
Fnatic’s Valorant team beat M3 Champions’ Russian roster 2-1 today in the EMEA Stage 1 Challengers playoffs, in what was an extremely close match. M3C are the roster that usually plays for Gambit, but given the Ukraine situation, Gambit are allowing them to play independently from the org.
Fnatic took the first map, Fracture, 13-11, before M3C won game two 13-8 on Bind. Game three went down to the wire, with Fnatic managing to secure victory 23-21 on Split.
This victory puts Fnatic in the upper bracket final, where they will face FunPlus Phoenix (who beat Team Liquid 2-0 today).
The top three teams from the playoffs will head to the Masters LAN in Reykjavík, Iceland, which runs from April 10th to 24th 2022. Masters will feature the best teams from the likes of EMEA, Korea, NA, APAC, Brazil, Latin America and Japan.
Fnatic’s Valorant team has two players – Boaster and Mistic – plus UK coach mini.
Boaster was his usual energetic self and celebrated the win on Twitter with the following gif:
Boaster also spoke about going up against Redgar ahead of the match:
After the match, Redgar said he cried following the loss but is ready to tryhard in the lower bracket in the rest of the Challengers playoffs:
M3C will now face G2 in the lower bracket, and Team Liquid will go up against UK esports organisation Guild Esports.
More recent UK Valorant news:
- Excel reverse sweep Tenstar to win Northern Europe’s first Valorant Regional League
- Daniel ‘ddk’ Kapadia joins 100 Thieves as Valorant general manager
- Mouz sign UK Valorant head coach Weber after entering Valorant with Luzuh, Kryptix and more
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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.
