In the group stage, the eight teams that won their first game in their respective group faced off against each other in a winners match. The teams that won the winners matches have now secured their spot in the playoff stage.
Paper Rex, FNATIC, Team Heretics, and NRG became the first four teams to secure their spot at the VALORANT Champions 2025 playoffs. Here’s what went down.
VALORANT Champions 2025 began on September 12th in Paris. The group stage phase of the tournament is currently underway. Each group consists of one team from the four regional VCT Leagues.
In Group A, we saw Paper Rex face off against GiantX. Before this match, Paper Rex had secured a dominant win against Xi Lai Gaming.
In the match against GiantX, Paper Rex started slow, not being the most clinical on attack. They went on to lose map 1. On Maps 2 and 3, the engine of the Paper Rex train was operating at full power.
They dominated on the attack rounds and completed the reverse sweep. With that, Paper Rex became the first team to secure their spot in the playoffs.
In the second game, we saw DRX face off against NRG. The last time these two teams faced off against each other was during VALORANT Masters Tokyo 2023. Back then, DRX lost 2-0 to NRG.
With that loss in mind, DRX dominated NRG on the first map, winning 13-4. But the following two maps were as close as they could get. NRG won both of them with a scoreline of 13-11. The thing to point out here is that in both games DRX reached the score of 11-8. Following this, they were unable to secure another round, resulting in NRG winning five maps in a row.
One would question the coaching staff and the players on how they went on to lose from a winnable position.
Riot/Valorant esports on X
Going into this event, not a lot of people had high hopes for Team Heretics. Many just pushed this team to the side, as their regional performance hasn’t been the best. But this year, they did win the VALORANT x EWC tournament.
After shocking the world and defeating G2 Esports 2-0, they faced off against T1. In the first half of the year, T1 won VALORANT Masters Bangkok 2025. Since then, the team has not been in the best run of form. This continued into this match as Team Heretics defeated them 2-0.
The last game was between MIBR and FNATIC. In the past, we have seen Boaster and Aspas, two of the best VALORANT players, face off quite a few times.
Now, with new teammates, no one would predict which team would win. MIBR won map 1 in a dominant 13-5 victory. It did feel like Aspas was in his element.
In map 2, FNATIC flipped the script and secured a 13-7 win. Finally, it was Boaster who had the last laugh. FNATIC completed the reverse sweep after a chronicle 1v3 clutch to help FNATIC qualify for the playoffs.
In the coming days, we will see the first round of elimination matches in the group stage.
Featured image: Riot/Valorant esports on X
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