ScreaM on loss to Version1: 'They totally changed their comp'

Masters: Reykjavík finally saw the meeting of North America and Europe’s best VALORANT teams as NA’s Version1 faced off against EU’s Team Liquid. The match certainly lived up to the year-long hype.

In the end, Team Liquid fell to V1, as the No. 2 seed from NA advances to play Korea’s Nuturn Gaming in the next round of the winner’s bracket.

In the first half of Split, Team Liquid and V1 went back and forth in score. After switching sides, Liquid ran away with three rounds before V1 hit back with a seven-round streak. Despite V1 holding the momentum, Liquid took the first map in OT.

For Map 2 on Ascent, V1 didn’t let the drawn out first map keep them down as they won a tight showdown 13-11. Erik “Penny” Penny and Jamal “jammyz” Bangash were two integral parts to the second map and pulled off some amazing multi-kills to secure the win on Ascent.

In their EU matches, Team Liquid were undefeated on Ascent, making V1's victory even more impressive.

The conclusion to the match occurred on Haven and this map resulted in a much more decisive victory for V1 with a final score of 13-4.

V1 IGL Anthony “vanity” Malaspina pointed toward yesterday’s play-in match against Japan’s Crazy Raccoon as a reason they were ready for Liquid today.

“Us playing that play-in match is probably a decent amount of the reason why we beat Liquid,” vanity said after the match. “We showed a lot more nerves in the first match than we showed in the second one. Having the opening match to get those out of the way proved beneficial for us today.”

Team Liquid were one of the overall favorites heading into the event so the loss to V1 can certainly be considered an upset.

Although Team Liquid were aware that the playstyle between EU and NA differs, it is clear that they weren’t expecting the strategy V1 came in with.

“Today we lost our game. It didn’t go as planned. We should have won Ascent, and we got owned on Haven,” Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom said after the match. “We tried to come up with the best game plan possible against them. We don’t know what can happen, sometimes we analyze a game and then the other team just comes up with another comp and that’s what happened today. Today they totally changed their comp.”

With two NA and EU matchups today, there is no guarantee the two regions will meet again following Fnatic and Sentinels. Liquid will have to make a run through the lower bracket starting with facing the winner of Wednesday's KRÜ Esports vs. Sharks Esports matchup.

One thing to be sure of? VALORANT’s NA and EU rivalry is just getting started.