G2 ended 2019 on a positive note as they lifted the Champions Cup Finals trophy after taking down Spirit in a two-map grand final in Malta.

The French team bounced back from last week's heart-breaking defeat in the cs_summit 5 final to a mousesports side with stand-ins to pick up a much-needed title - their second of the year after Good Game League 2019, back when Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković and Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač had not yet been added to the lineup.

It was not always pretty, but G2 fully earned the victory against a stubborn Spirit side on what was a remarkable day for French Counter-Strike as their success was followed by Vitality's triumph at EPICENTER. Spirit could not complete the Cinderella story after coming through the European tournament's last-chance stage but still gave the French players a run for their money. In the end, the Russian team have plenty of positives to take from the tournament, where they proved that they can fight for bigger things after spending most of 2019 in and out of the top 30.

The series began on Train, a must-win map for G2 before Mirage, where Spirit had demolished FURIA in the previous round of the playoffs. But it was actually the Russian team who came out the livelier of the two sides as they started off the game with a 3-0 lead on the CT side.

The dynamic of the game changed once G2 had money in the bank. Despite Artem "⁠iDISBALANCE⁠" Egorov's best efforts to keep Spirit in the game with his AWP, the French side ran freely on the map and prevented the CTs from stringing rounds together, with the half ending with a 9-6 lead in favor of nexa's troops.

A trio of kills from Nikolay "⁠mir⁠" Bityukov in the pistol round put Spirit back in the game, with the Russian side following that up with the next two rounds to level the score at 9-9. G2 responded in the first full gun round, but their three unnecessary deaths late in the round proved costly as they were left with a very weak economy for the following round.

G2 won their first title with the current roster

iDISBALANCE continued to wreak havoc with the AWP, powering Spirit to take a 13-10 lead, but they would not be able to go all the way as G2 tightened up and secured the map without losing any more rounds.

Spirit got off to a flying start on the CT side of Mirage and raced to a 5-1 lead despite losing the pistol round, with Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev making his presence felt with a series of multi-kill rounds. With the game starting to get away from G2, huNter- took matters into his own hands and let the team's comeback attempt, ending the half with 17 frags as the Frenchmen picked up a narrow 8-7 lead.

The Serbian kept that form going and picked up two key frags in the pistol round to stop a B execute from Spirit. After a chaotic period in which force-buys were traded, G2 took control of proceedings and constantly shut down the Russian offense to run away with the game.

Champions Cup Finals standings: