Team Vitality swiftly took down Ninjas in Pyjamas 3-0 at the third ESL in-person competition in 2021 for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 

Cologne/Stockholm/New York – ESL’s calendar for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 2021 rounds off with Intel® Extreme Masters Winter, in Stockholm, Sweden. In Sunday’s grand final, the French powerhouse Team Vitality defeated the Swedes Ninjas in Pyjamas in a Bo5 round robin with a swift 3-0 victory, taking home their stake of the USD 250,000 prize money. 

With IEM Winter 2021 marking the first ESL Pro Tour Masters Level tournament Intel® Grand Slam IV, Team Vitality now leads the race towards the USD 1M prize. As this year’s IEM Winter edition was the last EPT Masters tournament contributing points for the ESL Pro Tour Championship, IEM Katowice 2022 kicking off on February 15th, teams also fought for their shot to make it to one of the most prestigious competitions in CS:GO worldwide. 

“We are really ecstatic and happy to have won the grand final for IEM Winter 2021 against Ninjas in Pyjamas. It’s been a hard and long year, but our efforts got us this win today, we all played at our best,” says Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut from Team Vitality and awarded EPT DHL MVP. “Not only our skills as an individual but also as a team connected us together. Especially after the two years of COVID-19, it is amazing to be able to play in a studio environment at a LAN event.”

In addition to that, other highlights coming out of IEM Winter 2021 were:

• GODSENT, Astralis and FaZe Clan were all able to secure IEM Katowice Play-In Slots.
• Team Vitality locked-in a IEM Katowice group stage slot.
• With Team Vitality winning IEM Winter, Virtus.pro qualified for the IEM Katowice group stage, knocking NIP into a IEM Katowice Play-In slot.

The competition followed ESL’s established COVID Safety Protocol,  a safe environment for staff and teams. Precaution measures included testing of everyone involved in order to join team activities upon arrival as well as presenting a negative PCR test result to open access to a team’s practice, recreation rooms, and all tournament areas.

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