Let’s continue with our recap of the IEM Road to Rio RMR, the last qualifier before the first CS:GO Major in Brazil. We’ve already talked about the five surprises of the competition: three teams and two players. Here we talk about those who disappointed us during the RMR. So today CS.MONEY Blog will analyze the main failures of the last qualification.
G2 Esports
We couldn’t start with anything but the elephant in the room. G2 Esports was number five on HLTV’s world ranking before the RMR and was the definite favourite to hit the Legend status.
What we’ve seen in Malta can’t be described in any other way but as a catastrophe. 1-3, and losses to such teams as 1WIN and GamerLegion don’t suit the ambitions of the European squad. NiKo, the team’s leading force, was not in his usual form: the tournament rating of 1.07 is lacklustre, to say the least (The first part of the promo code: SHI). The only good thing we can say about G2 right now is m0NESY‘s development, as he had a somewhat decent tournament and his individual performance was in the top 10 of European RMR A.
Astralis
Like G2, Astralis finished European RMR A in 12th-14th place. The Danish squad was the world’s number eight before the start of the tournament. However, there were concerns: Astralis have lately been unstable, and the sudden replacement of k0nfig could not be considered good news.
It is worth noting that everyone, except for blameF, finished the tournament in the red zone. Unfortunately for xyp9x, his streak of 17 attended CS:GO Majors has come to an end.
Eternal Fire
Since the above are two top-tier teams that finished 12th-14th, it might be considered as the wall of disappointment. And there’s one more team here, by the way. Eternal Fire can’t boast of huge names like NiKo or gla1ve, yet it is a strong team with XANTARES as their star player (Second part of the promo code: VN1). Ismailcan had a great tournament, his 1.24 rating is sixth-best in group A, but 1 win with 3 losses is a rather disappointing result.
Complexity Gaming
But not only in European RMR A the favourites flopped. In the Americas RMR, Complexity was the team with all the chances to qualify. Among all participants in this regional tournament, Complexity had the third-best world rating. The players tried their best and without a doubt gave it all till the very end. The final spot in the Rio Major was only gone in the overtime of the third map against Imperial. Yet this tournament isn’t something the players and the management would be proud of.
nafany
Finally, there’s one thing about individual performance we can’t help but mention. While Astralis underperformed as a team, Cloud9‘s captain left a lot of questions before Rio. The team may be purposefully not in their peak form to show their best in Brazil. Still, their captain, nafany, finished the RMR with an untypical average rating of 0.81, which is quite sad for his previous average of ~1.0. The squad now has three weeks to prepare for the Major, so we expect their game to change.
Speaking of that, we hid a code inside this article that would bring you closer to the fabulous prizes. Find it and head to the GameChanger Hub page to activate it. Lots of rewards await!
