Two giants in decline clashed today in the first big match of the Dreamhack Winter CS tournament, just hours after they took each other on in a CS:GO showmatch.

Both fnatic and Na`Vi opened up their Dreamhack accounts with tight wins over TeG and Moscow5 respectively and the top of the table clash was set to be a classic given what's on the line. It would be a match between past titans, each hoping to recapture the form that saw them take the world by storm, elusive as it may be, it seems like fnatic may just be getting there, if their performance today is anything to go by of course.

It's been a difficult slog for fnatic over the past few months. Since the team lost the talismanic duo of Christopher 'GeT_RiGhT' Alesund and Patrik 'f0rest' Lindberg they have suffered an extremely inconsistent and unstable year, especially with the Delpan issue that caused so much controversy and seemed to crush the teams spirits. Things haven't been too different for the Ukrainian side either who, after taking over the CS World and crushing everyone in their path for an entire year suffered a loss of form akin to Ronaldinho.

The team have had plenty of out-of-server problems to deal with including the loss of their main sponsor Arbalet and that seems to have affected their in-game performances. Recently things have been looking a bit more positive for both teams, with a grand final appearance at the ESWC for Na`Vi and the introduction of Michael 'Friss' Jørgensen to the fnatic lineup they have each looked sharp and ready to prove a point.

It was Na`Vi who drew first blood in the match that would realistically guarantee qualification from the groups, but they were pinned back instantly by a resilient fnatic side. The first half on de_tuscan continued in the same manner, with both teams exchanging rounds and nobody really doing enough to pull away, soon enough though Na`Vi put one foot in the elimination stages after enjoying a run of rounds that would see them go into the second half 9-6 up.

After switching sides fnatic looked like a very different beast, with the Danish AWP star Friss turning up the heat on the Eastern Europeans with a dazzling display. Na`Vi managed to put a plug in the hole which saw them leak 6 straight rounds and continued to fight hard for most of the second half, but in the end there was little they could do to stop the fnatic onslaught and eventually caved to the Swedish team, losing 16-10 overall. fnatic have since gone on to defeat Moscow5 to secure qualification on top of their group, whilst Na`Vi join them thanks to a win over TeG.