forZe eliminated as Road to Rio CIS Group A comes to a close; Spirit through to semi-finals

FORZE missed out on a playoff spot in ESL One: Road to Rio CIS after finishing in fifth place in Group A, which was topped by Spirit.

Andrey "⁠Jerry⁠" Mekhryakov's charges, the second-highest-ranked team in the tournament, dropped out of the qualification zone with a 1-2 loss to Gambit Youngsters - their third defeat in the group after being previously beaten by Nemiga and Spirit.

The elimination comes as a huge blow to the Russian team, who have been on a downward trajectory since the start of the year. FORZE have just a 55% map win rate in 2020 and recently added former mousesports coach Sergey "⁠lmbt⁠" Bezhanov to their backroom staff with hopes of turning their fortunes around.

forZe bow out of Road to Rio in the groups

Meanwhile, Spirit extended their winning streak to five after taking down Winstrike in just two maps in their last match of the group stage. The Russian team, who broke into the top 20 last month after qualifying for DreamHack Masters Spring, currently have two of the top five performers of the tournament in Nikolay "⁠mir⁠" Bityukov (1.39 rating) and Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov (1.30).

Spirit will advance straight to the semi-finals, scheduled for May 15-16, while Winstrike and Nemiga, who ended the group stage with nine points, will be placed in the first round of the playoffs.

Below you can find the final standings of the group:

Group A

TEAM

M

P

Spirit

5

15

Nemiga

5

9

Winstrike

5

9

Gambit Youngsters

5

6

FORZE

5

6

Unique

5

0

The group stage of ESL One: Road to Rio CIS will come to a close on Sunday with the final round of fixtures in Group B, in which all six teams are tied on points.