Movistar Riders survive TYLOO to keep Major dream alive

Movistar Riders joined the 2-2 pool in the Major's Challenger Stage after knocking TYLOO out in overtime on the decider map.

Movistar Riders and TYLOO went into their first elimination match in Stockholm with a veto that included some of the Chinese squad's strongest maps, but in the end it was the Spaniards who were able to scrape by on both Inferno and Vertigo despite not being competitive on Mirage.

The Spaniards will likely face Heroic in their final Challengers Stage map, if favorites MOUZ and Astralis win their matches, although if upsets occur Movistar Riders could find themselves paired up with Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov and his Spirit teammates.

Movistar Riders burst out of the gate with a 6-0 streak on the attacking side of Inferno, a bold pick in the face of TYLOO, a team with plenty of history on the most played map at CS:GO Majors. The scales quickly balanced, however, as the Chinese team found their groove on the CT side to bring it within one at the half, 7-8.

TYLOO took the lead after securing the second-round buy to turn things around in their favor, but Movistar Riders fought tooth and nail to stay in the game, which remained tied until the 26th round. Alejandro "⁠alex⁠" Masanet then won a crucial round by letting two terrorists through Banana before backstabbing them.

The map then went all the way down to the wire in the 30th round when a late B play by TYLOO was stopped by Raúl "⁠DeathZz⁠" Jordán Nieto, who denied the bomb plant with seconds on the clock to secure the round in-extremis for his team.

TYLOO regrouped and took control of Mirage from the start, a punishing pick against Movistar Riders, with Kelun "⁠SLOWLY⁠" Sun styling all over the Spaniards on the attacking side. Alejandro "⁠mopoz⁠" Fernández-Quejo Cano and company, completely defenseless, could only watched as TYLOO set the pace by moving their offensives across the map to a 10-5 lead at the half.

The second half was more of the same as TYLOO secured the second pistol round to further their already one-sided lead, with Movistar Riders only able to chain three rounds in the half before going down 7-16 ahead of the final map of the series.

Vertigo started off with a back-and-forth tug for control as TYLOO settled into the defense, but it was Movistar Riders who took hold of the economy game early on to take the lead as YuLun "⁠Summer⁠" Cai and company struggled to get back into the map round after round as mopoz and Alvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" Garcia came online for their team to take a 10-3 lead before TYLOO bounced back to take the final two.

TYLOO started to snowball on the attack, winning five rounds in a row to tie things up as Movistar Riders started to have flashbacks of their defeat at the hands of Virtus.pro in similar fashion. The Spaniards didn’t fold, however, and put up a wall, although they weren't able to seal the deal in regulation, needing five rounds of overtime to hit 19-16 before SunPayus closed proceedings with a collateral AWP double kill.