Only two more lives left for Astralis

Astralis, who are currently ranked fourth globally, won group A of BLAST Premier: Fall Groups just a few days ago. So it sounds a bit strange to say that the Danish team needs to go through open qualifiers to receive an invitation to IEM Rio Major 2022.

But, because of the new rules, everyone needs to qualify for the tournament and some teams are required to start from scratch. At first sight, you’d think that a team of Astralis’ caliber will smash all opposition in an open qualifier. But let’s not forget that most of the matches are best-of-one and the format is single-elimination.

Two qualifiers lost, two more left 

In total, there are four open qualifiers for IEM Rio Major’s regional qualifiers for Europe. Each of the open qualifiers starts with 64 teams and in the end, 20 teams will advance to one of the two regional qualifiers — European RMR A or European RMR B.

Given the number of qualified teams, a team like Astralis shouldn’t have to worry. But right now, they probably do. Because the first open qualifier saw them finish 9th-16th and in the second one, they lost the very first match!

In the Round of 64, Neon Ranges, a team that didn’t even participate in the first open qualifier, ended Astralis’ dreams despite the huge disadvantage they had after the first half, which ended with a score of 10-5. The final score was 14-16 and Astralis’ fans and players are probably in a state of shock.

Astralis are not feeling it

The most successful team in the history of CS:GO only has two tournament lives left. If they fail in the third open qualifier, their situation will be very complicated. It’s hard to remember a similar situation in the history of CS:GO, when a team of this caliber failed so hard in a series of open qualifiers.

In the first open qualifier, the team that ended Astralis’ run was Aurora Gaming. This team from Denmark isn’t even ranked yet and nobody knows who the players are! What is going on here?

Normally, you’d be tempted to start considering the possibility of cheating after a result like this. But, as the second open qualifier proved, Astralis are just not feeling it right now. You can’t suspect their opponents of cheating when it happens more than once.

Hopefully, Astralis will prepare a bit better for the third open qualifier and will get the job done before the situation turns ugly.

Header: Astralis