fnatic secured a spot at the StarSeries SL i-League Season 3 LAN finals by defeating HellRaisers 2-1 (13-16 Cobblestone, 16-10 Train, 16-7 Inferno) in the deciding match of the closed qualifier.

fnatic started the qualification by defeating their own academy team 2-0 and followed that up by defeating their up-and-coming countrymen Epsilon with the same score.

In the deciding game, Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist and co. were matched against HellRaisers and started the series on Cobblestone. The European mixture had a good first map, thanks in large to the heroics of Vladyslav "⁠bondik⁠" Nechyporchuk and the 1v1 clutches that went their way. After closing out Cobblestone, HellRaisers were in the driving seat on the first half of Train, leading 9-2 on the Terrorist side.

The Swedes were able to come back towards the end of the half, and a 1v2 pistol round clutch from Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson kicked off the complete comeback. fnatic only dropped one round on the Terrorist side of Train to secure the map win with a 16-10 scoreline. The final map was Inferno, and after a tight start to the decider, we saw Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman kick into a higher gear once again as his team ran away with the scoreline. It was 16-7 in the end to make it 2-1 in favor of fnatic for the series.



flusha had couple of brilliant individual moments in the series

The following teams are now qualified for SL i-League Season 3:

The NA slot for the tournament will be decided tonight, with the winner between CLG and Renegades taking the spot, while the last EU spot will go to the winner of the HellRaisers - Envy match.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.