After going winless in the regular season, KRÜ Esports managed to pull off a most impressive run at the VALORANT Champions Tour Americas’ Last Chance Qualifier, earning their spot in this year’s VCT Champions after claiming victory over Leviatán on July 23.
Everyone counted them out. No one expected them to make it past their opening playoff series, let alone book their ticket to Champions. But one by one, KRÜ Esports took down the entirety of VCT Americas, including the likes of MIBR, FURIA, Leviatán (twice), and top seed Cloud9.
At this point, KRÜ had already beaten Leviatán in the upper-bracket semifinals, but after the latter’s beautiful reverse sweep against NA favorite Cloud9, anything was possible.
Related: ‘Unthinkable’: Cloud9 eliminated in shock VCT LCQ reverse sweep
The best-of-five grand finals between the two LATAM teams went to four maps—Split, Pearl, Ascent, and Lotus—with Leviatán taking just one map in the series. KRÜ ran away with the rest, steamrolling through Split and Ascent and making things interesting in a tight finish on Lotus to close it out.
Throughout KRÜ’s miracle 5-0 run, it was Angelo “keznit” Mori, the team’s primary duelist, who led them all the way to the ticket to Champions with a huge victory in the end. His strong performance earned him the grand finals MVP award, with the Chilean rifler posting 73 kills over the course of the grand final.
“It’s a dream come true,” KRÜ captain Marco “Melser” Amaro said immediately following the match. “We knew that we were capable of doing this.” MVP keznit added that it was “spectacular” to play alongside the KRÜ core who have played together for the better part of a year. Keznit joined KRÜ in March after a stint with Leviatán, defeating the very team he departed following his benching.
Looking ahead, KRÜ has secured their spot at VCT Champions where they’ll be taking on Paper Rex first in the group stage. Paper Rex previously had a fantastic run in Tokyo despite playing without their star player, Ilya “something” Petrov. With something reportedly confirmed to make his return at Champions, KRÜ will face yet another huge obstacle to overcome if they want to extend their win streak even further.
The group stage of VCT Champions, live from Los Angeles, California, begins on Aug. 6.
