Imperial to compete in ESL Challenger Melbourne

Imperial Esports have been invited to the ESL Challenger Melbourne. The team led by Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo will face off against other CS:GO juggernauts such as ORDER, Evil Geniuses, and OG for a $100,000 prize pool and a spot at the ESL Challengers championship. 

Following the World Ranking-based invitations of OG and ORDER, ESL has now extended the invitation for the Challengers in Melbourne, Australia to Imperial Esports, filling three of the four spots reserved for invited teams. Although Imperial is the only team from South America to compete in the global competition, that could change if another South American team obtains the final invitation.

Teams that qualified for ESL Challengers Melbourne 2022:

• ORDER (ESL World Ranking)
• Wings Up ( Asian Qualifiers)
• VERTEX (Oceania Qualifier) 
• Entropia (European Qualifiers)
• Evil Geniuses ( North American Qualifiers)
• OG (ESL World Ranking)
• Imperial (ESL World Ranking)
• To be decided (ESL World Ranking)

Imperial reportedly making major roster adjustments 

The Brazilian team is reportedly making changes to the lineup, breaking the legendary two-time Major-winning trio of Gabriel “⁠FalleN⁠” Toledo, Fernando “⁠fer⁠” Alvarenga, and Lincoln “⁠fnx⁠” Lau. According to a report from Draft5 which was published on July 21, the Brazilian team is allegedly parting ways with their star player fnx. Moreover, reports from Dust2 suggest that the organization is most interested in MIBR’s Marcelo “chelo” Cespedes as a potential replacement for fnx.

It was also reported that other popular Brazilian players like Rodrigo “biguzera” Bittencourt, Lucas “Lucaozy” Neves, and Jhonatan “JOTA” Willian were on the team’s radar, but no contracts have been signed yet. Furthermore, Imperial’s CS:GO coach Luis “peacemaker” Tadeu is allegedly parting ways with the organization. After the coach removed the mention of the company from his Twitter bio, the rumors became even more credible. The organization, however, hasn’t yet made any public statements regarding any of the reports.

Current Imperial Esports CS:GO roster: 

• Gabriel “⁠FalleN⁠” Toledo 
• Fernando “⁠fer⁠” Alvarenga 
• Ricardo “⁠boltz⁠” Prass 
• Vinicius “⁠VINI⁠” Figueiredo 
• Lincoln “⁠fnx⁠” Lau 
• Luis “⁠peacemaker⁠” Tadeu 

peacemaker and fnx’s journey with Imperial

The Brazilian esports organization signed the ‘last dance’ roster earlier in February, reuniting the two-time Major-winning core of fnx, FalleN, and ⁠fer⁠. At the PGL Major Antwerp, the squad came out on fire and put on some incredible performances, finishing in the top 11. Since then, however, Imperial’s performance have plummeted, as evidenced by their 11 defeats in the last 14 matches. At IEM Dallas and Roobet Cup, the team displayed a lackluster performance, taking an early exit from the group stage of both events. As their string of poor performances persisted, they were unable to qualify for DreamHack ESL Valencia 2022 and also failed to move past the Group stage at IEM Cologne and REPUBLEAGUE Season 3.

Header: ESL