Today was a filled with sweeps and heartbreak for Brazilian fans at ESL One Belo Horizonte.
FaZe Clan took down Team Liquid in the first game of the day, while Mouz defeated SK Gaming. This means that a Brazilian player winning a huge international event on home soil remains a pipedream now that SK Gaming and Team Liquid (Epitacio “TACO” de Melo) are eliminated from the tournament.
Related: SK and Liquid survive elimination at ESL One Belo Horizonte
FaZe Clan vs. Team Liquid
The Europeans of FaZe had a good warmup map against Liquid on Nuke, destroying them 16-3 and allowing Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs to get an insane one-vs-three clutch. Liquid fought much harder on FaZe’s pick, Dust II, by keeping FaZe on their toes at the half, 10-5. FaZe slowly came back and inched toward series point at 14-13, but Epitacio “TACO” de Melo saved Liquid’s tournament lives with crucial opening CT kills two rounds in a row to win Dust II 16-14 and to force map three Mirage. The match decider was a much more one-sided affair, with FaZe stomping LIquid 16-7. GuardiaN finished the series atop the server with 22 kills per map and a crazy 99.9 average damage per round stat.
SK Gaming vs. Mousesports
With the Brazilian crowd behind them, SK couldn’t convert the energy into round wins consistently on Dust II, while Mouz easily won 16-7. Mouz’s momentum, however, was stunted by SK’s CT side on Train. The European side came alive after losing the second pistol round and went from 11-5 to 12-11. Mouz gave up a round and reset SK late into the game, before they finally closed out the series with a 16-12 scoreline. Chris “chrisJ” de Jong and stand-in Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert were Mouz’s top performers in both maps with 23 and 21 kill averages, respectively.
The best-of-five grand final between FaZe and Mouz will take place tomorrow at 3:30pm CT. FaZe are 3-0 in terms of their last three offline matchups against Mouz—at the ECS Season Four Finals, the ELEAGUE Boston Major, and the ESL Pro League Season Seven Finals.
