Red Bull Home Ground 2022 highlights from the tournament

Red Bull Home Ground 2022 is over, the last major Valorant event of the year. Eight teams from around the world came together to compete, it was always intended to be a pretty spectacular event and it certainly paid off.

The event marked the first time that the North American teams were invited together, giving them the chance to take on the European teams on their home soil. And those NA teams did well, with 100 Thieves and Cloud9 taking out the competition and taking them to the All-NA Finals.

The Grand Final is definitely worth watching, but there were many great moments throughout the tournament. Here are some of the best from Red Bull Home Ground 2022.

Boo! Head shot!

Team Heretics may only have reached the quarterfinals, but Richardas “Boo” Lukasevicius’ ridiculous performance cemented their status as legends at the event.

Already a match behind and behind Team Vitality by six rounds to 10, it was almost over for Heretics, but they kept working in hopes of a comeback. This led to some pretty wild escapades from them, nothing more than Boo firing his pistol wildly while Vitality blew smoke around the spike they were trying to disarm. And somehow it worked: Boo inadvertently split two enemies and destroyed the third as the smoke cleared, preventing deactivation just before it was complete.

kru-sing

KRU Esports was the underdog of the tournament and struggled to progress from the pools to the quarterfinals. Many expected the defending champions at Red Bull Home Ground, Team Liquid, to send them packing, but this time it didn’t happen.

Whether through a sudden burst of attention or sheer fluke, KRU managed to find their footing in their matches against Team Liquid, pushing the more experienced team all the way to the end of the turn limit. The first game between the two ended 13-11 after a truly heroic performance by CRU, and the second game was even worse. Liquid seemed to have lost their minds and the first half of the match ended 8-4 in favor of KRU, while the second half ended a little later.

That’s not to say that Liquid didn’t perform amazingly even when the pressure was on them. In a particularly excellent performance by Elias “Jumppi” Olkkonen, he scored four wins with the AWP, displaying excellent marksmanship.

They come out of the walls!

It’s usually not recommended to start spraying bullets through the walls of the Valorant map, but in the semifinal match between 100 Thieves and Team Vitality, it pretty much became an art.

The first game between the two ended in overtime and the match was called a round 25 despair. Vitality seized the opportunity and managed to hit his own wall slam, as they are called, early in the round, significantly reducing the 100 thieves. In the end, only Brenden’s “star”, McGrath, remained.

With two enemies remaining and few options available to him, Stellar took the only path available to him: hide behind a stack of crates, spray, and pray. And it worked. Both members of Vitality lined up where he fired and his shots hit perfectly, knocking them out and earning a clutch that won’t soon be forgotten.

in the cloud9

KRU may have made it to the semifinals, but they just weren’t ready for Cloud9. Team North America missed out on the quarterfinals thanks to their group play, and a day off between games did wonders for them.

To be fair, it must be said that their semifinal match was an absolute top. Cloud9 finished the 18-round Game 1 with a score of 13-5 and then finished the match with a score of 13-3 in Game 2. It was an overwhelming performance filled with fast, aggressive play that KRU simply couldn’t match. And that led to something no one predicted: the final for all of North America.

so many thieves

100 Thieves and Cloud9 weren’t exactly strangers until the Red Bull Home Ground: Both teams played various teams in their home leagues and traded wins over the years. The game could have gone either way, until 100 Thieves took full control and crushed Cloud9.

The games were fairly even from the start, with 100 Thieves winning the first game 13-10 and the almost even second game 13-9. But in game 3, the fight seems to have moved away from Cloud9. 100 Thieves won nine sets in the first half of the match and needed just four to win the entire tournament. And they did it without any opposition from Cloud9, finishing the Red Bull Home Ground with an incredible 13-3 victory.

“Bringing home the team’s first international title is very important to us, as Red Bull Arena served as the perfect training ground for 100 Thieves ahead of VCT 2023,” said 100 Thieves’ Matthew “Cryocells” Panganiban of the win. “It was amazing to prove those who underestimated 100 Thieves wrong and to play with a group of people who are my friends… I love those guys.”

100 Thieves are now the defending champions at Red Bull Home Ground, but as we’ve seen with Team Liquid, that doesn’t always mean a guaranteed win next time around. Will they return next year to defend their crown? We’ll have to wait and see. Watch full footage from Red Bull Home Ground 2022 on the Red Bull Gaming Twitch or YouTube channels.