What happened at the Major qualifiers - Day 3 debrief

7-10-2022 10:21

Five teams have now qualified for the IEM Rio Major, with 19 more names to go. Day three of the action-packed Regional Major Ranking events is behind us, and here's what happened.

Qualification and elimination was on the line for the first time on day three of the Regional Major Ranking events, with teams in the 2-0 pool fighting for a spot in Rio and those who went 0-2 looking to stay alive in both European tournaments and the Americas.

FaZe were the first to seal their fate and clinch the first Major spot, looking very much like the shaky team we had seen on the opening two days but once again getting the job done despite their struggles. In the deciding Sprout series, they added two more overtimes to their tally (seven in total in four maps) before sweeping the Danish-majority side on Mirage.

flamie's 1WIN caused the upset of the day

Ninjas in Pyjamas soon followed in a hard-fought win against Cloud9, which went to the full 30 rounds on the Vertigo decider, where the team recently bolstered by Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen came back from 1-9 with an impressive T side display. At the end of the day, Natus Vincere joined the Legends list on the back of a 2-0 win over Outsiders.

Current standings
IEM Road to Rio Europe RMR A standings
IEM Road to Rio Europe RMR B standings
IEM Road to Rio Americas RMR standings
IEM Road to Rio Asia RMR standings

Meanwhile in the Americas, Evil Geniuses edged past the resilient 9z in a three-map thriller and Liquid beat Complexity 2-1 to lock out two of the region's six spots in Rio. The two 3-0 teams will face off on Sunday for the single Legends Stage spot Americas have on offer.

Two of the four lowest-ranked teams in Europe RMR A, Aurora and ECSTATIC, have bowed out of contention for a spot in Rio after suffering their third consecutive loss. In the Americas, it was ARCTIC and Infinity who remained winless and exited the competition after three rounds.

In the last best-of-one matches of the RMRs, 1win and B8 caused the biggest upsets of the day after beating G2 and fnatic and are now one series win away from Rio, as are Bad News Eagles, who decimated Astralis in round three. This leaves us with some big names up against the ropes heading into the final two rounds, as G2, fnatic, and Astralis are all sitting on a 1-2 record in the A group and need two consecutive series wins to qualify for the Major.

Who has qualified so far?

Legends Stage

TBD

Standout results of day 3

Europe A
Bad News Eagles 16-3 Astralis
B8 16-9 fnatic
1win 16-13 G2
FaZe 2-1 Sprout
Cloud9 1-2 Ninjas in Pyjamas

Europe B
Natus Vincere 2-0 Outsiders

Americas
00NATION 16-11 Imperial
Evil Geniuses 2-1 9z
Liquid 2-1 Complexity

Performance of the day

It's a double-header for performance of day three at the Regional Major Ranking events. Bad News Eagles duo Dionis "⁠sinnopsyy⁠" Budeci and Flatron "⁠juanflatroo⁠" Halimi were unrelenting in their Ancient match against Astralis, combining for a staggering 53 kills (16 multikills) and 9 opening kills in just 19 rounds to secure the landslide victory.

Honorable mentions:

Ricky "⁠floppy⁠" Kemery vs. Liquid (38-18, 1.78 rating in a 16-14 win on Overpass)

Andrei "⁠arT⁠" Piovezan vs. O PLANO (26-5, 2.35 rating in a 16-2 win on Mirage)

Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut vs. Monte (25-7, 1.94 rating in a 16-7 win on Dust2)

Frederik "⁠acoR⁠" Gyldstrand vs. Spirit (44-28, 1.43 rating in a 20-22 loss on Ancient)

Play of the day

Albeit unsuccessful in the series in the end, Complexity converted a flurry of clutches in the Major-qualifying match against Liquid. Here's one of floppy's four clutches, from when his team was staring down the barrel up against map point on Inferno:

HLTV live coverage

HLTV.org has coverage teams over in Malta and Stockholm to bring you interviews from location, photos, and story updates on Instagram. Here are the interviews we conducted during the second day of the Major qualifiers:

Interviews

hampus: "Aleksib is a great IGL, I don't know why G2 didn't want him"

nitr0: "I think we are going to be super strong for the Major"

NBK-: "In the past where I was leading you could see that some players had doubts... here you can feel a real unity"

lollipop21k: "I really think we can go to top-eight, if everything goes well"

Social media comments

Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy: "After vacation, we didn't come back with a proper mindset"

Vincent "⁠Brehze⁠" Cayonte: "[HexT] is a very integral part of our team"

Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard: "The teams that we've played, played surprisingly well"

Eduardo "⁠dumau⁠" Wolkmer: "We've been working very hard on the CT side of Inferno"

Seven more Major spots on the line on day 4

The Asia RMR kicks off on Friday while competition in Europe and the Americas heats up, with qualification or elimination on the line in every single match from here on out.

The winners of the following series will qualify for the IEM Rio Major later on Friday:

IEM Rio Major qualifying matches
11:00 ENCE vs. BIG
13:00 FURIA vs. paiN
13:00 ATK vs. 9z
14:30 Spirit vs. Bad News Eagles
14:30 Cloud9 vs. 1win
14:30 B8 vs. Sprout
16:30 Complexity vs. 00NATION