Despite the new addition of Tarik Celik, who joined the team one week ago, MIBR failed to make much of a splash in the former Major champion’s team debut.
Going up against Team Liquid in the final match of the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier’s opening day, MIBR looked unprepared and outmatched by Liquid, who pushed through two maps in convincing fashion.
The series started off on Inferno, and it was truly a team peformance by Liquid. MIBR’s star player, Marcelo “coldzera” David, struggled mightily. The arguable top player in the world finished with the second-least amount of kills and the lowest rating in the entire lobby. His poor showing combined with none of his teammates stepping into his place saw MIBR drop the first game of the series 16-8.
Cache was a slightly better map for coldzera, but neither he or his teammates did anything special to pull themselves back into the series. Thanks to a scintillating performance by Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken and Keith “NAF” Markovic, who combined for 53 kills, Liquid finished out the match with a 16-9 map win.
Despite the win, Epitacio “TACO” de Melo finished with just 14 kills in the series. That number for the former teammate of MIBR’s Brazilians was not only the lowest in the lobby, but so was his 0.63 rating. Fortunately, his replacement, Jake “Stewie2K” Yip, played almost as bad. The former Cloud9 star totaled 23 kills and finished with a team-worst 0.73 rating in the two maps.
MIBR will need to find some cohesiveness quickly in order to bounce back in this eight-team tournament. Fortunately, they have Cloud9 on the schedule next. In their match against Astralis, tarik and Stewie’s former team seemed to be just as uncoordinated as MIBR with their two fill-ins.
With the win, Team Liquid advance to play the Danish team of Astralis, who looked strong in their two-game victory over C9 earlier today. The teams will square off on Monday, July 23.
The ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier will resume at 1pm CT tomorrow, July 22 with Natus Vincere vs. Fnatic, followed by FaZe Clan vs. mousesports.
