EDward Gaming have become the third team to be eliminated from
VALORANT Champions 2026. The Chinese 4th seed got outclassed by the VCT Pacific Stage 2 winners,
Global Esports, in a swift 0-2 loss. EDG never found their footing since the play-in stage of VCT China Stage 2, and the addition of Park "
stew" Young-chan wasn’t enough to bring a breath of life to the 2024 World champions.
After the disappointing end to their Champions campaign, Sheep Esports had the opportunity to talk to EDG’s Wan “CHICHOO” Shunzhi to hear his thoughts about the match and their underwhelming run at the event.
What went wrong for EDG today against Global Esports?
Wan “CHICHOO” Shunzhi: "I feel like we got a couple of days to prepare before this match, but we failed to reach an agreement on some of the in-game opinions. We failed to show everything that we did agree on in our scrims on the main stage. It was really upsetting to lose some rounds because we couldn’t make the adjustments in time.
stew is a prolific Duelist player, but we saw him play KAY/O and Breach on Sunset and Summit, respectively. What was the reasoning to play him as an Initiator/Duelist flex instead of a pure secondary Duelist alongside Zheng "ZmjjKK" Yongkang?
CHICHOO: I feel like, for some of the maps, the team shares some things in common and agreed to make some sacrifices to deliver a better performance. We needed to think and focus more on communication to make everyone deliver the best that they have got. Therefore, we chose to run double Duelist on some maps while we chose to run other comps on certain maps.
EDG let both LOUD and Global Esports, two very good teams on Summit, pick the map. Was there a reason that the team let Summit float in the map veto? Did the team have certain strong points that failed to materialize on stage?
CHICHOO: I have to say that we were not confident in letting our opponents pick Summit, but we had to because Ascent is our perma-ban. Therefore, we had to prepare something for Summit. We didn’t have much experience playing this map back in VCT China. For the team comp we used against LOUD, our coaching staff told us it was a good comp to counter LOUD. However, when we were on the stage, it was way more complex than we thought. We have to rethink this comp, and the team comp we showed today was reflective of the agreement that we reached. We had prepared something for this map, but it was way different on stage, and we couldn’t show it.
Despite being eliminated from Champions, you still have Team Liquid’s Ayaz “nAts” Akhmetshin to root for. How do you think he will do against G2 Esports, and do you see TL making a good run?
CHICHOO: I think nAts will win the match against G2 Esports for sure. It shouldn’t be a problem for him to qualify for playoffs. I feel like Team Liquid have gathered together well under his leadership. He is a really good leader I want to learn from. I wish him the best of luck, and I will cheer him on for the rest of the event.”
