FURIA recover from nine-round deficit to beat Spirit; ENCE ease past Bad News Eagles

The Brazilian team are now just one win away from qualifying for the playoffs on home soil.

FURIA have secured themselves an all-important win in the 1-0 pool against Spirit, recovering from a slow start versus the Russian side and playing off the momentum of the Brazilian crowd to edge out a 16-13 victory on Mirage.

The win puts FURIA just one best-of-three away from qualifying for the playoffs in Rio, where they are now the sole hometown representative. Spirit have been sent to the 1-1 pool and still have two lives left in their own qualification bid, but will need to reflect and recover from the loss after letting a substantial lead slip heading into day two.

On the B stream, ENCE handily dispatched of Bad News Eagles in a one-sided Ancient affair, dominating Flatron "⁠juanflatroo⁠" Halimi's side with a stellar showing on the defense before closing things out in the second half. The Kosovar team are now staring down an early elimination in the 0-2 pool, the exact opposite to their path in the Challengers Stage where they breezed through with a flawless 3-0 showing.

FURIA limped out of the gates in their match against Spirit, a force-buy in round two offering them little solace after Pavel "⁠s1ren⁠" Ogloblin stepped up with a quad kill on the B bombsite to keep the CIS team in the lead. Nine of the following ten rounds went to Spirit, Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov leading by example with multi-frag rounds, and Igor "⁠w0nderful⁠" Zhdanov stepping up alongside him as Spirit silenced the home crowd with a 10-1 lead. It was an ace from André "⁠drop⁠" Abreu that finally reinvigorated the Brazilian team and gave them the fire to begin a comeback effort, with the team running with the momentum to bring themselves up to four rounds heading into the side swap.

It was a completely different state of affairs once FURIA were on the defense, drop continuing to put up numbers for his side and buying enough time for both Rafael "⁠saffee⁠" Costa and Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato to come online. The trio combined and put up an oppressive defense against the Russian team, each stepping up with heroic rounds to keep the momentum in the favor in FURIA. Spirit were given the same treatment as they received in the second half as the Brazilian side rode off the roars of the crowd, dropping only two rounds before shutting down the map, 16-13.

Bad News Eagles ended up on the receiving end of a battering from ENCE on the B stream, unable to respond to the European combine's stalwart defense on Ancient. Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer was the one topping the server in terms of frags by the time his team were leading 11-0, but both Alvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" Garcia and Paweł "⁠dycha⁠" Dycha also had just one death to their names, proving just how dominant the team had been in the first half. The Kosovars finally got on the board in round 12 by recovering a 2vs5 situation, and converted the win into two more rounds to give themselves a fighting chance heading into the side swap.

Bad News Eagles still stood a chance thanks to Ancient being an extremely CT-sided map and the Major thus far being dominated by the defense, and they showed signs of life by responding to ENCE's pistol win with a force-buy, converting into a four-round streak. Those rounds only served to make the end scoreline look slightly less one-sided though, and ENCE were quickly back to their winning ways as they won their last three to take things over the line.