Na`Vi, ESC through South

The third preliminary qualifier for ESL One Cologne took place during the past two days, this time featuring teams from countries in South-Eastern Europe, and in the end it was Natus Vincere, ESC, USSR and dAT that came out on top.

After North and South-West pre-qualifiers, this week it was South-East Europe's turn to find four teams that will fight for the 6 spots at the $250,000 event ESL One Cologne.

The main favorites Natus Vincere were the only big name among the participants, and they secured their spot as expected without dropping a map. They did, however, run into some resistance by Russian side Faith who won first halves on both maps against the Ukrainians in the deciding quarter-final match, but eventually faltering 16-11 and 16-12.

Na`Vi march on towards ESL One Cologne

The other mostly-Ukrainian team, dAT, were next to make it through, as they had no trouble at all in their side of the bracket, beating Greek team frantic and Czech GUNRUNNERS who had Tomáš "oskar" Šťastný as a stand-in.

USSR also made it through, but they had to fight for every win despite seeing their side of the bracket open up with OnBots' loss to Hungarian squad ZYLEX. They dropped double digit rounds against Romanians cooL, Poles szef and Hungarians WiLD, before eventually defeating Serbian-Macedonian-Bosnian mix EasyPeasy 16-8, 16-13.

The last team to make it through the South-East qualifier was the up and coming Polish side ESC. They played a long series against Slovakian nEophyte, who won the first map after double overtime 26-20. ESC evened it up on de_train 16-10, and then won by the skin of their teeth on de_dust2 16-14.

After adding these four teams, the participants list for ESL One Cologne European Finals now looks like this:

ESG!	CPH Wolves	London Conspiracy	tomtebloss
Titan	mousesports	Planetkey Dynamics	Epsilon
dAT	USSR	Natus Vincere	ESC

There are four more spots in the European Finals up for grabs, and they will be handed out in the Open qualifier next week, from July 22nd-24th.

After that, the 16 teams will then play in the European Finals on July 26th-27th where they will look to snatch one of the 6 available spots for the $250,000 tournament.