Keiko finally returned to face off against his previous team, after the re-draw delaying this series for another day.
NRG and Team Liquid were both fighting for their survival in this series where the winner advances to play-offs and the loser drops out of Masters Santiago in the Swiss-Stage.
Map 1 of this series went to Breeze. A map where NRG have kept switching up their composition to find the correct one to fit their new system. This time, they opted for Keiko to return to Jett. His first game in Tier 1 for Team Liquid in 2024 was on Jett where he dropped 37 kills in regular time in VCT EMEA. He somewhat replaced that performance in this map, dropping 24 kills alongside mada who was on the Yoru.
NRG took Breeze 13-11 in a tightly contested series where both sides had parts of brilliance where their pre-round plans were perfect, and there were rounds where they were able to shut down quick site takes and control rotations around the map.
Map 2 went to Abyss, where Team Liquid just got rolled over by the NRG train. They couldn’t seem to get a grasp on their attack side, getting consistently re-taken with keiko starring once again on the Omen.
NRG took Abyss comfortably, 13-4, confirming NRG’s progression to Play-Offs and Team Liquids elimination from Masters Santiago.
Unfortunately for Team Liquid, MiniBoo had a rough series going 21-36 across the two maps on the Neon, despite going 10-0 in his first 10 maps on the agent.
With the win, NRG will go into Play-Offs, where they will await the draw that will follow the series between G2 and T1 to see who they will draw out of the 1st seed teams. They will be facing one of the below three teams since regional matchups aren’t allowed in Play-Offs:
- BBL Esports (EMEA 1st Seed)
- Nongshim RedForce (Pacific 1st Seed)
- All Gamers (China 1st Seed)
Valorant Digest 
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