Team Spirit, one of the semifinalists of the PGL Antwerp Major, have qualified for the IEM Rio Major following a 2-0 victory against Bad News Eagles today in the Europe Regional Major Ranking (RMR) A’s 2-1 pool of the Swiss system.
Bad News Eagles are one of the best CS:GO teams of all the RMRs in terms of raw skill, but they couldn’t get their game going against Spirit’s structured system. The CIS squad kicked off the series with a dominant 16-6 victory on Nuke in which they showed a great T side (11-4) in the first half.
The series moved on to Mirage, where Bad News Eagles were once again dominated in the first half (11-4), this time playing as Terrorists instead of CT. The Kosovar team improved in the second half with a good T side of their own, but the gap was too big for them to close and Spirit ran away with a 16-11 victory. Boris “magixx” Vorobiev was consistently good throughout the series and finished as the MVP with 45 frags and 23 deaths, which netted him a 1.55 rating.
While this result has put Spirit through to the IEM Rio Major, it leaves Bad News Eagles in a similar position they faced in the RMR for the PGL Antwerp Major. The squad led by Dionis “sinnopsyy” Budeci made the first Major of the year after beating SINNERS in the 2-2 pool of the last RMR and became the first Kosovar team to qualify for a Valve-sponsored CS:GO tournament.
The next European teams to qualify for IEM Rio Major will be decided after Sprout vs. B8 and Cloud9 vs. 1WIN.
