A tantrum, a missed phone call and a near-disqualification: the crazy story of mibr’s ESWC 2006 triumph

As Made in Brazil prepare for their opening tournament of the new season, we go through the story of the famed team's first major title.

Everyone loves a good underdog story, and Counter-Strike history has seen some great ones – tales of teams who have produced shocks and managed to make deep runs at tournaments or even win trophies when the odds seemed stacked against them. One of such stories takes us all the way back to 2006, when an mibr team haphazardly put together conquered the ESWC crown and put Brazilian Counter-Strike firmly on the map.

It’s not like Brazilian teams had been pushovers before that, though. In the early years of competitive Counter-Strike, mibr itself and also g3x had acquitted themselves internationally quite well, with the former even boasting two CPL World Tour titles to its name, while the latter had raised eyebrows at CPL Summer and Winter events. But as a major title continued to elude them, g3x’s Renato "⁠nak⁠" Nakano and Bruno "⁠ellllll⁠" Ono, and mibr’s Raphael "⁠cogu⁠" Camargo decided to form a team who could fly the country’s flag even higher.

Everything seemed set for cogu to make the move to g3x, but there was a problem: Alexandre "⁠gAuLeS⁠" Chiqueta – currently the most popular Brazilian Counter-Strike streamer – refused to yield his spot in the team he had founded. "cogu was on his way to São Paulo and that same day gAuLeS showed up with the papers from g3x and said: ‘I am the owner and you cannot kick me out’," recalls nak, who currently plies his trade for Sharks. "cogu called [mibr owner] Paulo Velloso and asked if we could assemble a secondary team for the organization."

The trio reached out to former mibr member Carlos "⁠KIKOOOO⁠" Henrique Segal, who immediately committed himself to the project, but could not get hold of GameCrashers’ Daniel "rdz" Alves. And since Paulo Velloso wanted to announce the team that same day, the players turned to one Lincoln "⁠fnx⁠" Lau, who was just taking his first steps in the competitive circuit.

"How can you assemble a team without a player you wanted just because he did not pick up the phone?," questions nak. "That was crazy." But the roll of the dice on an unknown fnx turned out to be a calculated gamble: "He had not played in any of the top teams in Brazil, but we knew he was very good, we had practiced a lot against him. So we decided to bet on him."

At the time, mibr were already supporting two teams, the one that cogu had left, now headlined by Eduardo "⁠eduzin⁠" Chagas, and a more modest roster, also based in Rio de Janeiro. Paulo Velloso decided to promote a meritocracy by creating a triangular tournament with these three teams. The prize was the biggest sponsorship deal that the organization could offer and the chance to compete around the world that came with it. As cogu’s side won the competition – allegedly without losing a single map –, the players went into the room where mibr’s main team were playing and just took the computers that were there. Those present knew that an era had come to an end.

One of the biggest benefits of playing under mibr at the time was the possibility to bootcamp at the prestigious Inferno Online center, in Stockholm, where they could find first-class quality practice opposition and try to eradicate the chaotic puggy style that had become synonymous with Brazilian Counter-Strike during the early days of the game. "We could test things out and understand what was working and what wasn’t," nak notes. "We practiced a lot in Brazil, but all our strats were working there, so there was no way for us to know whether they would work in a real tournament. In Sweden, we could perfect the things that were not working."

A fourth-place finish at WSVG DreamHack Summer, just two weeks before ESWC, set the bar high for the Brazilians, but as the tournament started, doubt was still hanging around the players. "We did not think that we could win the whole thing," nak admits. "When no one has done it before, you just never know. But when we got there everything was working out for us."

In Paris, mibr reached the playoffs after two keenly-contested group stages, leaving behind big names such as Pentagram, astralis and Spirit of Amiga. A 16-5 trashing of x6tence was followed by an overtime victory against ALTERNATE aTTaX, but their celebrations of a passage to the final were interrupted by the news that the German team had filed a protest for a flash bug by fnx on Train.

“It was very intense,” nak recalls. “According to the rules, if you used a bug you lost three rounds, which would go to the opposing team. Had they followed the rule, we would be out. But the discussion came down to fair play. The flash had been an accident and it had not interfered with the round. At one point, the admins said we were out, but then they changed their mind.”

The grand final pitted them against a fnatic side headlined by Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg. The Brazilians had lost the previous encounter with the Swedish team, in the second group stage in Paris, but once they saw the map were going to play for the title they knew the match was in the bag. “Inferno was our best map,” nak explains. “Our game plan was very good and we executed everything really well. Our T side was perfect, very organized, we practically did not repeat any strats. We had a different strat for every round. Some of the things we did back then still work today.” fnatic turned out to be no match for mibr, who ran out 16-6 victors in a near-perfect game that is still remembered to this day by many thanks to cogu’s spectacular quad-kill during his team’s CT pistol round.

After that event, expectation surrounding mibr rose accordingly, and the team managed to stay at the top, most notably winning shgOpen, finishing second to fnatic at GameGune and placing third at WEG e-Stars 2007 – which they attended with Jonas "⁠bsl⁠" Alsaker Vikan as a stand-in after fnx had infamously missed his flight. But as the year was about to come to an end, the players were lured by the financial security provided by the Championship Gaming Series (CGS) – even if that came at the expense of having to play a game they did not enjoy.

Asked if he regretted that decision, nak said: “Financially, it was a good move. CGS paid really good money, you played one tournament in a year and you were locked out. We thought: ‘Let’s go, maybe this is the future’. The top prize for ESWC had been $50,000, for CGS it was $500,000. The difference was enormous, not to mention the salary, which was also much better.” After the fall of the CGS, in 2008, the players returned to 1.6, but they found success very hard to come by. “We had lost a bit of the 1.6 rhythm. When we got back, we won a tournament in the US [IEM III American Championship Finals], but we could not win any big titles, even though we were close many times.” In 2009, the financial crisis hit esports, and the players were no longer competing full time; three years later, mibr closed their doors after not fielding a team for over 12 months.

nak’s eyes immediately alight when we discuss mibr's return under a new management and with the best Brazilian team in the game. In a way, he feels the successes of Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo's team as if they are his own, too; like he helped to lay the groundwork for the current state of Brazilian Counter-Strike. “Perhaps us winning ESWC changed the life of the Brazilian scene in CS and in other games,” he says. “I am not saying it would not happen eventually if we had not won it, Brazil is very big and has a lot of talent, but we earned a lot of respect abroad. It really changed my life.”