FURIA eliminate Na’Vi from IEM Rio Major

What a Friday night in Rio de Janeiro! The CS:GO community has rarely seen such an epic atmosphere at a LAN event. IEM Rio Major threatens to surpass all records and if FURIA Esports manage to qualify for the Grand Final, it will probably launch a new era in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

The quarterfinal between FURIA and Natus Vincere will go down in history. The favorites were Na’Vi but the crowd carried FURIA to a well-deserved victory. Despite losing the first map, the Brazilians proved that they know how to play this game.

The players

One player in particular, Kaike “LSCERATO” Cerato, had better stats than Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. He finished the match with 70 kills and 52 deaths, while s1mple had just 53 kills and 62 deaths.

Quite shockingly, s1mple was the weakest player on the server. This was likely the first time in his career that he performed this poorly. To be fair, the differences were small. The best Na’Vi player had 56 kills, so it’s hard to call him the weak link on his team.

But still, for s1mple to be mathematically worse than everyone else and have a rating 2.0 of 0.87 has got to be a warning sign for the club.

The match

The match between FURIA and Na’Vi started well for both teams. Na’Vi dominated most of the first map and had a big advantage at one point. Then, FURIA nearly made a successful comeback and took the lead at 14-13. But the next three rounds were won by Na’Vi.

On the second and third maps, FURIA proved to be much better prepared. They won each time with a score of 16-10 and there was nobody on Na’Vi’s roster to stand up to them. The CIS crew played well, but there was no hero on the battlefield for them.

Usually, s1mple is the man who gives the rest of his team high morale with his incredible skills and clutches. But in this match, he missed nearly every critical AWP shot.

It was strange to watch him fail so many times when it mattered but he probably felt the atmosphere in the arena. He even provoked the crowd at the end of the first map, as if to say: “I can’t hear how! Chant now!”

It was a wild night in Brazil to be sure, as the fans celebrated until morning as if their football team had won the World Cup. It remains to be seen if FURIA are strong enough to beat Heroic in the semifinals.

Header: ESL