ENCE becomes first Polish roster in Spodek for eight years

As per usual the Spodek Arena in Katowice will host the six playoff teams at IEM Katowice this weekend. But for the first time in eight years, the home crowd will have a Polish team to stand behind. The last time that happened was in 2016, when Virtus.pro made it to the quarter-finals.

ENCE, with four Polish players and Jakub "kuben" Gurczyński as coach, managed to make it through both the Play-in and the Group Stage at the main event of IEM Katowice. The brand-new team led by the legendary in-game leader Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander won their upper semifinal against G2 13-8, 13-7. ENCE has now defeated Astralis, Vitality, and G2 along the way. They now face MOUZ in the Group B final, where the winner advances directly to the semi-finals, while the loser will start the playoff run in the quarter-finals on Friday.

Paweł "dycha" Dycha showed emotions after the qualification was secured.

Another upset was delivered by Heroic, who eliminated Team Vitality 2-1. The match was extremely evenly fought, but in the end, it was decisive that it was only Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut, who was able to finish the match with a positive K-D score. The rest of the Vitality roster had difficulties finding impact with newcomer William 'mezii' Merriman continuing his bad start to 2024 on the server.

Vitality is out of IEM Katowice in last place, and once again the coveted title in Katowice will elude the Frenchmen, who have never found success in Poland.

Cloud9, Eternal Fire, and Complexity were also knocked out of the tournament on Day 3. For Cloud9 this marks another disappointing tournament run.

Results of Day 3 of IEM Katowice:

Monte – Cloud9 2-0
Heroic – Vitality 2-1
GamerLegion – MOUZ 0-2
G2 – ENCE 0-2
Complexity – Falcons 1-2
Natus Vincere – Eternal Fire 2-1

Today’s schedule: (CET)

13.30: Heroic – GamerLegion
13.30: Monte – G2
16.30: Spirit – FaZe
16.30: Falcons – Natus Vincere
19.30: MOUZ – ENCE
19.30: Heroic/GamerLegion – G2/Monte