saffee and insani power MIBR to semis over M80

The Brazilian team capitalized on strong starts to all four halves and an absurd performance from saffee on Anubis to take the series.

MIBR are through to the semi-finals of ESL Pro League Season 20 after a convincing 2-0 victory over M80 (13-10 Anubis, 13-8 Ancient), following up on their 2-1 win over HEROIC in the previous round and instilling confidence ahead of a difficult match against the winner of Vitality and Eternal Fire.

Date	Matches
ESL Pro League Season 20
21/09/2024	MIBR 16:15 Eternal Fire	Match

André "⁠drop⁠" Abreu's side never looked in trouble in the series courtesy of winning three pistol rounds, the force-buy after the only pistol they lost, and the first gun round on the T side on both maps, leaving M80 fighting from the back foot and "playing on 'super-hard' mode," in Fritz "⁠slaxz-⁠" Dietrich's words with Freya "⁠Freya⁠" Spiers after the match.

Clip: MIBR win the force on Ancient

"It was a different game because we knew they are the weakest team in the playoffs, so they were playing without any pressure," drop said of MIBR's conversation and game plan coming into the match.

"When you are playing with no fear it's hard to play against. We were watching their games and they were just pushing everywhere and never playing static, so it was hard to try to counter them. So it was more let's just play our game, let be comfortable, make them our play our game, and if we can do it we can just beat them at it'll be an easy fight for us."

The American team had secured a direct berth to the quarter-finals after not dropping a map in the group stage with wins over Complexity, fnatic, and Imperial, but couldn't recover from slow starts to every half nor find an answer to authoritative showings from Rafael "⁠saffee⁠" Costa and Felipe "⁠insani⁠" Yuji.

The Brazilian sniper was particularly potent on Anubis, dominating the early stages to grant MIBR the lead on the CT side before being forced into a handful of saves as M80 recovered to 6-6 at the break.

saffee continued to farm kills after the side swap, grabbing a quad-kill and ace to hit an absurd 28-2 K-D, but started to go quiet once guns came up with drop stepping up in his stead. M80 started to claw back, hoping to continue their 10-map winstreak on Anubis, but just failed to force overtime from a 6-12 deficit after falling to a Tec-9 rush in round 23.

Clip: Lake laughs as saffee reaches 28-2 K-D on Anubis

insani took over on Ancient with dominance in Middle, particularly in the second half to stamp out any chance of a late resurgence from M80.

Elias "⁠s1n⁠" Stein's side won a brief streak of rounds part way through the first half for some small salvation heading into the break, 5-7, and a pistol quad-kill from Ethan "⁠reck⁠" Serrano set his team up to begin a recovery effort. However, he went from hero to zero after getting caught out in the following round with a nade in hand, which gave back control to MIBR.

The Brazilians then turned a 2v4 in the first gun round to add another layer of misery to M80's day, and closed the game sooner after despite slaxz-'s best efforts.