The first qualification round for ESL One: Road to Rio 2020 began over 3 weeks ago with teams competing for ranking points in order to in order to establish a qualification order.
The qualification process is split among 6 different regions with all the top teams participating. With playoffs starting off from today, we bring you the results after today’s day of play in the lower bracket.
1. Team Vitality vs GODSENT
Vitaity after a few months of inconsistent results are slowly getting back to their best adjusting to new play style under “apex”. We did see some great counter strike from the French during the group stages and were expected to win against GODSENT. GODSENT also looked good during some stages but facing an ever improving Vitality, that too in the playoffs was always considered difficult.
The winner of the match-up was set to face the loser of Faze & NiP match, while the loser faced elimination.
GODSENT picked Dust II as their map choice while Vitality went ahead with Inferno. Nuke was left as the decider, if needed.
With Dust II commonly referred to as a paradise for people with good aim, Vitality looked to take their opponent’s pick. The first half was a closely fought affair, with Vitality leading 10-5. The second half was again a closely fought affair with GODSENT showing some cool executes. “RpK” however was in top-form and along with “shox” they managed to close out the map 16-14. “shox” topped the killing charts for his team with 27 kills but the overall leader was GODSENT’s “zehn” finding 30 kills.
Inferno was up next and with Vitality warmed up, GODESENT were up against the walls. They started off strongly though winning 4 rounds upfront after which Vitality struck back. They closed out the half again with a 8-7 lead. Moving to the defensive side, Vitality clean swept GODSENT to win comprehensively 16-7. “Zywoo” topped the killing charts for his team with 24 kills but the overall leader was GODSENT’s “Maden” laying out 28 kills. Vitality player their CT side with great co-ordination and gaining excellent banana control early.
With a clean 2-0 win Vitality will be feeling confident to take down either Faze or Nip in the next match. If Vitality continue to show the form they showed today, it will be interesting to see how far could they go on in the playoffs.
For GODSENT, it was a good experience playing against a tier-I opposition but for them to succeed they need more from seasoned pros like “maikele” and “styko” to perform better to have a chance progressing further in the playoffs.
2. North Capegemini vs Team Heretics
It was a battle of underdogs in second lower bracket match with North facing off against Team Heretics. North, however were playing with their coach “jumpy” as a stand in for “Kjærbye” who was out with sickness. This made Heretics a favorite to proceed further into the playoffs.
Heretics picked Inferno while North picked up their home map Vertigo. Heretics started on the ‘T’ side strongly racing into a 7-1 lead. But North settled slowly and fought back to end the half with 8-7 deficit. Heretics then looked comfortable on the CT side to lead 15-10.
With their back to the walls , North needed something to lift them up. And that something came from their coach who won a crucial 1 v 2 clutch to keep them in the game. With their spirits now lifted, North were quick to capitalize on Heretics mistakes and won the next 4 rounds to make the score 15-14. The last round was a ‘B’ execute for North which was eventually bought to a 1 v 1. “Nivera” held his nerve against “gade” to ninja defuse his way to victory.
“maka” was the leader dropping 31 kills with “gade” topping the charts for North with 23 kills.
North started strongly on Vertigo winning 4 rounds straight before Heretics bought out the double AWP’s to shut them down. Heretics setup was too difficult for North to counter which brought them to a 10-5 deficit after the end of first half. North won the second pistol too which lead to a string of 6 rounds from them to lead 11-10. But Heretics then struck with two rounds straight to bring North’s economy to a breaking point. With no reserve funds and a very fragile economy to back up North lost the map 16-13 to bow out of the competition. It was again “maka” who dropped a 30 bomb to end the series with 61 kills.
Heretics will now face the loser of Astralis v G2. With both of their next opponents a Tier-I team Heretics will have to improve drastically to have a chance at progressing if they want their playoffs campaign to be successful. As for North, it was a competitive showing and things are only to improve from here after “Kjærbye” returns to the lineup.
3. 9-10th and 11-12th place
Ence faced Copenhagen flames for deciding the 9-10th places while Fnatic were up against Movistar Riders.
Both of these matches finished in 2-0 scoreline and both had a double overtime map.
Ence came out victorious in the first match winning 22-20 on Train and 16-5 on Inferno. The second match was an upset victory for Movistar Riders who continued to claim big fishes. They defeated the current #1 team Fnatic in a double O.T victory on train 22-20 and then followed it with an absolute thrashing on Inferno winning 16-2!
Fnatic end to campaign couldn’t have been more justified as they have been utterly inconsistent throughout. Ence end 9th, Copenhagen Flames 10th, Movistar Riders 11th and Fnatic 12th and end their first stage of qualifying for the Road to Rio. Do watch the highlights for the BM which Movistar Riders gave to Fnatic!
Note:- The Rio major was scheduled to take place in May 2020 but due to the ongoing pandemic the major was shifted to November 2020. The prize pool of first Major will be added to the November Major. ESL on its part have decided to host three qualification rounds in order for teams to remain at their peak. Each qualifying stage will have Regional Major Points(RMR) which will be added to determine the qualification order. Each qualifying stage will have a prize pool of $255,000 divided across the six regions. To read more about this, click here.
To read about how each team fared in the group stages, click here.
