After over five consecutive hours of grueling Counter-Strike, FaZe Clan are the champions at this weekend’s $200,000 ESL One Belo Horizonte event.
The European juggernauts defeated Mouz in the grand finals of the Brazilian event with a 3-2 series scoreline. Mousesports selected Inferno and Train as their map picks, while FaZe chose Cache and Mirage. Dust II was the leftover decider map from the veto process.
Related: FaZe and Mouz emerge victorious in the semifinals of ESL One Belo Horizonte
With an early lead 5-2 on Inferno, Chris “chrisJ” de Jong accidentally team-killed Martin “STYKO” Styk during an anti-eco execute, and he subsequently lost a clutch that same round. Mouz seemed to tilt completely after that, losing almost every single round thereafter. FaZe won Inferno 16-6.
FaZe continued to dominate Mouz going into Cache with an 11-0 start, before Mouz finally came alive later on. Despite being down 11-4 at the half, Mouz pulled off a phenomenal comeback on their T side, eventually winning Cache 16-14 thanks to FaZe’s late game eco mismanagement. It all wouldn’t have been possible without chrisJ’s redeeming one-vs-three AWP clutch at 11-14.
With the series tied, both teams looked anxious as they could feel the pressure mounting on map three, Train. Mouz broke down FaZe’s defenses brick by brick each round to gain an 11-4 lead. FaZe did the same to Mouz’s CT side, until they were reset at 14-12. Even with Nikola “NiKo” Kovac top fragging the server at 26 kills, Mouz still came out on top, 16-12.
FaZe commanded the first half of Mirage 11-4, while Mouz tried to overcome the deficit one round at a time after halftime. To no avail, it wasn’t enough to outlast FaZe’s all-star CT side. Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs was a huge component in his team’s map four win at 24 kills—14 of which were with the AWP.
Dust II, the series decider, was a neck-and-neck fight, and each round had unpredictable results. Mouz led at halftime 8-7, following a T side that was heavily focused on A site aggression. Then FaZe won the second pistol round. ChrisJ got a crazy 4K in the first buy round, but FaZe’s Havaard “rain” Nygaard quickly responded with a one-vs-two clutch that same round. Three more FaZe buy round wins—plus a tight three-vs-three retake in the final round—led to them finally winning Dust II at 16-9, earning them the trophy in front of the Brazilian crowd. NiKo dropped a 30 bomb to end the series.
ESL One Belo Horizonte was FaZe’s second championship win this year, after they won IEM Sydney last month. Even though they have Jorgen “cromen” Robertsen filling in for Olof “olofmeister” Kjajber, they still pulled through in high-pressure moments when it mattered, especially against a strong team like Mousesports. Now FaZe will be shifting their attention to the next international event in July, ESL One Cologne, where they’ll look to take down their biggest threat to CS:GO world supremacy—Astralis.
