FURIA beat Liquid, Imperial trounce M80 in Monterrey

Two more Brazilian teams join the 2-0 pool at the Americas RMR.

The second set of matches of the Americas RMR’s 1-0 pool has come to a close, with FURIA and Imperial prevailing over Liquid and M80 respectively. The Brazilian duo join Complexity and paiN in the 2-0 pool, which will see two teams qualify for the Copenhagen Major.

Liquid came out the brighter of the two teams, picking up a 2-0 lead, but the game quickly got out of hand for them. Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller called two timeouts in a short amount of time, but he couldn't prevent his team from ceding control to FURIA.

With Andrei "⁠arT⁠" Piovezan and Marcelo "⁠chelo⁠" Cespedes leading the charge, the Brazilians went to the break up 7-5, and the scoreline would have been even more severe for Liquid if cadiaN had not pulled off a massive 1v3 clutch in the final round of the half.

Liquid carried their momentum into the second half and retook the lead with a convincing 3-0 run. Once FURIA had money in the bank, the game entered a scrappy phase as the teams fought tooth and nail for control.

The Brazilians’ star players then came to life in key moments of the game: Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato, who was having an uncharacteristically quiet afternoon, pulled off a 1v2 clutch, and, minutes later, Yuri "⁠yuurih⁠" Santos found two frags in a 2v3 post-plant, taking the wind out of Liquid’s sails.

Meanwhile, on the secondary stream, Imperial made light work of M80 in a one-sided Anubis game. The North American team even drew first blood, but it quickly fell apart from there. João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos and Vinicius "⁠VINI⁠" Figueiredo combined for 29 frags as Imperial took a 9-3 lead on the CT side, and the Brazilian team followed it up with a quick 4-0 run after the side switch to wrap up the game.