MOUZ and Outsiders advance to the semifinals of IEM Rio Major

IEM Rio Major has entered the Champion Stage and two teams have already been eliminated. Cloud9 and Fnatic played well in the previous stages, but now they encountered opponents that knew exactly how to take them down. Cloud9 had to beat MOUZ while Fnatic had to beat Outsiders.

In Fnatic’s case, it’s hard to say that we had high expectations because the truth is that we didn’t. This team hadn’t done anything significant in a long time, so the fact that they got so far was already a big surprise.

Cloud9, on the other hand, were regarded by everyone as the dark horse of IEM Rio Major. Given their perfect run in the Legends Stage, a victory against MOUZ seemed not only plausible but more than likely. And to make matters worse, they won the first map! But after that, MOUZ proved to be better prepared.

Cloud9 vs. MOUZ

Once again, Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov played well in this match and was by far the best player on the server, finishing with a K-D score of 66-42. Abay “HObbit” Khasenov was also in top form, getting over 60 frags as well. But the other three members of C9 did very little to help them.

MOUZ’s game was characterized by great cohesion. Every single player on the team stepped up when it mattered and carried their own weight. The lowest frag score was 49 while the highest was 57. We rarely see that in CS:GO. Usually, teams have one player that frags a lot and at least one that does very poorly.

Cloud9 won on Inferno (11-16) but lost on Overpass (16-13) and Ancient (16-9).

Fnatic vs. Outsiders

This match proved to be a walk in the park for Outsiders, who encountered a Fnatic roster that had little experience at this competitive level. To be fair, Fnatic looked like a team that has a lot of potential, but they’ll need to train a bit harder if they want to get better results in 2023.

The match was over very quickly: 16-11 on Inferno and 16-8 on Mirage. The audience expected a lot more but unfortunately, Outsiders didn’t want to waste too much time. Their best player was Evgenii “FL1T” Lebedev, who finished with a rating 2.0 of 1.41.

Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson, being a Fnatic veteran, was probably expected to carry his team to a victory in this match. But his performance was on par with that of the other members of his team: 29-34 and an ADR of just 65.5.

Header: ESL