IEM Rio Major 2022
Now that Legends stage is about to begin, it's important to do a quick recap of everything we know about the participating teams until now. A lot has changed since the previous major, we have new surprises and upcoming teams, as well as shift in the favorites. Let's take a look
Challenger Stage
First, let's start with the teams who qualified to Legends from Challenger stage.
Bad News Eagles went 3-0 once again but they haven't met a single top10 team and the best one they fought against was BIG, where BNE managed to come back from 4-11 deficit. A slamming victory against 00NATION was more than expected, and a 2-0 against GamerLegion was partly due to a huge number of mistakes from the latter team. 3-0 result is impressive but we should not overestimate them just yet, they have good firepower but Legends stage is way more competitive and most of the teams here have far more experience and knowledge
MOUZ had harder opponents in general, but they still managed to surpass all expectations since the very first match and went 3-0. They had a confident victory against Outsiders and EG, and although they dropped a map to fnatic they didn't have any problems in that game either. They are looking quite scary after the Challenger stage but at the same time we have to keep in mind that they have players like dexter and JDC who could be a massive liability
BIG went 3-1 and that might seem like a great result for a team who recently changed 2 players, but their wins weren't easy at all. First they had to come back from 3-13 against FURIA and that was a huge mess, FURIA just let it slip away and if we are being honest they should have never lost that. Another game was 11-4 11-16 against BNE, and again, what the hell are you doing BIG? The remaining 2 wins were against lowest teams in the tournament, Grayhound and 9z, and even there BIG had some struggles as they had to go into overtime against 9z. Out of all the teams who qualified to the Legends stage, BIG are probably the most questionable one, and it's a really big question whether s1n will be able to keep up
FURIA did slightly worse than expected, but at least they were able to recover from that major hiccup against BIG and not lose any more games. Their match against OG was kind of a lucky one, but other than that they seemed quite solid despite not playing against strongest teams. There isn't really much to say about them, FURIA are a stable team who keep going far in the tournaments, but they never have what it takes to push it further into playoffs and get the title
Very weird to see Outsiders here considering how they played throughout the Challenger stage and in previous tournaments. Their opening game against MOUZ was a total mess where they went 3-3 to 6-16, they had a hard time against IHC and even against Vitality they were extremely lucky to win it after Vitality gifted them 4 antieco rounds. In a normal scenario we should have seen them in 1-2 pool and possibly even out of the major, but somehow they survived. Outsiders have some serious issues, n0rb3r7 isn't showing up enough and on top of that Qikert has been underperforming for a long time. With what we've seen from them so far it's really hard to believe they could do something in the Legends stage
Few rounds away from being the biggest upset of the whole Major, Cloud9 managed to bring it back and get another chance. They started their journey with 4 back to back overtime maps, losing to Grayhound as well as being down 6-15 against Imperial. Even if we assume they are on a decline, that's not the performance you would expect from a team like them. However, they probably know this better than anyone else and they must have used the short break between stages to work on their issues, they also gained some firepower and confidence during the last wins. Keep an eye on them, C9 are a team to either turn everything around and start playing good again or flop once more and disappoint everyone
Ever since winning the ESL Pro League Vitality have been down in performance and Challengers stage was no exception. In fact, they played a lot worse than expected even by the previous standard of underperforming. Losing 10-16 to GamerLegion, 12-16 to Outsiders after losing antieco 4 times, even almost giving away 1-0 1-2 to OG. Zywoo is in great form towards the end of the year but he can't carry them alone, and the rest of the team is not looking good right now
After starting 2-0 fnatic barely avoided going 2-3 and missing out on the Legends stage. If they had someone else other than 9z they would have almost certainly lost it, and it's weird how they dropped in form so hard during the tournament. They could always bring it back after this short break, but given how the competition level is higher and how much they actually struggled, they will probably be one of the first teams to go out this time. Their main issue is stability, which they have almost none to begin with. One day you have players like roeJ and FASHR destroy everyone, and the next day both of them are chilling in lowtab with no kills. If it continues like that they will find no success
Legends Stage
It's been a month since Faze had their last official match, and it was the RMRs, where they had a hell of a struggle against tier2 teams despite going 3-0 and finishing 1st. They also had 2 unsuccessful tournaments before that, finishing 4-6th in BLAST Fall Groups and 5-8th in ESL Pro League. It's clear that Faze are not the team they used to be when they won the previous Major, but it doesn't mean they completely forgot how to play. They still have one of the strongest rosters right now and with a month of preparation that they had they can easily come back to the top with a surprise
Adding Aleksib was an interesting move by NIP, but sadly they didn't have a chance to show much of it since. They finished 2nd in RMR which was a good result, and destroyed some tier3 teams in a local Swedish tournament, but that was about it. In theory they should be a lot stronger now but they are more of a dark horse right now and it's hard to expect anything because anything is possible. Either way, not having Plopski dragging the team down will be a huge bonus for them
After a somewhat surprising show in RMR Sprout went back to losing to random tier3 teams and it wasn't pretty at all - they lost twice to ex-Finest, threw 1-0 14-5 to 1-2 against Entropiq with coach, went 0-2 against BLUEJAYS etc. Some people could say they were just saving strats but that's too many losses against MUCH worse teams to let that excuse slide through. Despite that, there is still room for a few upsets from them considering they have lauNX and Staehr
Spirit are on a clear upward trend since adding w0nderful, they had a few interesting wins in ESL Pro League, good performance in RMR and a warm up win in FireFlow against South American teams. In vacuum they would still be a questionable team but with some of the teams here Spirit can actually have a good chance at making it to top8 and even going far, just like they did in Antwerp. They are a good dark horse candidate just like NIP
Navi are Navi. S1mple as that. They are far from their peak form, especially with sdy, but they are still arguably top3 teams overall and in this Major in particular. After a questionable show in ESL Pro League they redeemed themselves in RMR and finished 1st, and now a month later we can expect them to be more than prepared. The only danger for them is the bo1 stage because if for some reason something goes wrong and they start 0-2 or 1-2 it might turn out in an awkward result
One of the most overrated teams in Legends stage and it doesn't even make full sense how they ended up here after all the roster changes. ENCE had easiest opponents in RMR in Falcons and HEET so they finished 2nd, and they also finished 2nd in ESL Rotterdam after beating teams like TeamOne and Eternal Fire. A lot of people are hyping them up but there isn't really a good enough reason to do so
When people are making a list of favorites for this Major, Heroic isn't one of the first teams to come to mind, but they are for sure one of the most likely candidates. They are extremely well structured and stable, and although they failed their ESL Pro League run they are still up there with the top teams. We saw that as they went through RMR and BLAST Fall Showdown almost flawlessly, and they should make it to the Quarter final at the very least
Another dark horse team, though with less chances compared to the other ones. YEKINDAR gave Liquid a huge boost that they needed for so long and now they can actually compete on a decent level and even aim at playoffs in most tournaments, but they still need to figure out something about nitr0 and oSee. If they get those two to hit their shots or at least not die in every round for free, they will be a scary team. Liquid went 2nd in ESL Pro League only falling 2-3 to Vitality in a super close fight, and had a swift journey through the Americas RMR. They will probably be underrated for this Major but if they manage to get to top8 they could make it really interesting