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XERXIA crashed out of the 2022 Valorant Champions on Monday after suffering an elimination match defeat. The Thai esports organization took on the Latin American team KRÜ Esports in a last attempt to stick around and was defeated with a 2-1 score.
The franchise became the third Asian team to make an early exit from the tournament.
KRÜ displayed a praiseworthy performance at the 2021 Valorant Champions. However, they also faced a similar fate to XERXIA of being eliminated from the group stage if they were to lose this match.
After losing to FunPlus Phoenix and XSET, respectively, KRÜ and XERXIA joined the lower bracket of Group C. Both franchises were beaten with a 2-0 score.
The recent match between KRÜ and XERXIA was the first time that both teams had met each other, despite having appeared on the international stage on several occasions.
The teams started their series with Icebox as their first pick, and XERXIA decided on a typical composition. For the team’s duelist pick, Thanachart “Surf” Rungapajaratkul selected Jett. The move earned the player the status of someone to watch out for during the game.
At the start of the map, KRÜ used a strategy made popular by FunPlus Phoenix to bag four successive rounds. The gaming strategy basically had the team purchasing up to Vandals in round two of the match.
In the first half of Icebox, the Latin American team carried on with their strategy commendably well, while XERXIA, on the other hand, could not keep up and marred their performance with several mistakes. Surf, who picked Jeff at the start of the map, was unable to make any proper impact with his agent, while Roberto “Mazino” Rivas for KRÜ displayed his expert use of Sage on the map.
Despite the overwhelming difference in their performances, XERXIA were still able to bag a few rounds, stopping KRÜ from dealing out a full sweep. With a number of lucky timing advantages and clutches, the map ended with a 13-4 win for KRÜ.
The next map, Haven, was selected by XERXIA, and they tried and succeeded in making up for their previous failure. They blazed through the first six rounds with six consecutive wins after getting the pistol round. KRÜ attempted damage control in the first half, but XERXIA obtained the pistol round in the second half and closed the map with a win. Thanamethk “Crws” Mahatthananuyut and Panyawat “sushiboys” Subsiriroj gave a startlingly good performance, which helped the Thai team to end the map with a 13-7 win.
Contrary to the previous two maps, the third, Ascent, had no particular team in the lead at the start. The situation carried on to the second half, when KRÜ got into the lead by strengthening their attack. They were able to use every chance they got to lay waste to their opponent’s defense. This led to a similar situation as the first map, and KRÜ won Ascent with a 13-6 score.
Although KRÜ came out on top of the match and performed much better than in their game against FunPlus Phoenix, the team is yet to play as well as it did in the previous games. With XSET claiming victory over FPX in the Group C winners’ match, KRÜ will take on FPX in the decider match to be held on September 8. The winner of the outing will advance to the playoffs, and the loser’s journey will be cut short.
