Defending champions FaZe Clan are no longer defending their trophy
Deepak Jangra
The European CSGO roster FaZe Clan didn't manage to hold on to defend their trophy in IEM Rio Major, losing to Bad News Eagle by 2-1. BNE eliminated the PGL Major winner from the tournament. The match was an absolute banger between a 1-year-old roster at 23rd position and the world's number 1 team.
Coming into this Rio Major, FaZe Clan was pre-qualified for the Legends Stage. In this Brazilian Major, the European roster played three matches against Cloud9, Team Vitality, and Bad News Eagles, and they lost all of them.
On day one, the first match they had against C9, which they lost by 14-16, was best of 1. The next match was against Team Vitality, and again it was best of 1 played at Inferno, which they lost by 16-6.
Today was the second day of Legends Stage. FaZe Clan and BNE were in the lower bracket as both lost their first two matches, and one was going home from this Rio Major. The match was best of 3, where the first map was Vertigo, BNE's pick, the second map was Nuke, FaZe Clan's pick, and lastly, Mirage was the decider map.
Aside from the FaZe pick Nuke, the other two maps went to overtime, where the last map was double OT.
FaZe Clan VS Bad News Match Result
| FaZe Clan | Map | Bad News Eagles |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | Nuke | 19 |
| 16 | Nuke | 8 |
| 20 | Mirage | 22 |
Scorecard
| K-D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating2.0 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 86-66 | +20 | 82.4 | 76.2% | 1.27 | |
| 75-59 | +16 | 80.9 | 73.3% | 1.21 | |
| 63-68 | -5 | 76.3 | 70.3% | 1.03 | |
| 65-69 | -4 | 72.5 | 68.3% | 1.02 | |
| 64-67 | -3 | 64.8 | 69.3% | 0.93 |
| K-D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating2.0 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 77-71 | +6 | 85.7 | 63.4% | 1.13 | |
| 80-71 | +9 | 79.1 | 63.4% | 1.10 | |
| 63-75 | -12 | 77.3 | 66.3% | 0.97 | |
| 56-64 | -8 | 53.4 | 72.3% | 0.89 | |
| 52-72 | -20 | 63.0 | 62.4% | 0.78 |
BNE was able to hold on to their spot, but tomorrow, they will face the former Major champions, the Ukrainian CSGO roster Natus Vincere, which is also going to be a lower bracket match of round 4 on day 2 of Legends Stage. The losing team will be eliminated from the tournament.
FaZe Clan becomes the first team to be eliminated from the IEM Rio Major 2022. The team’s in-game leader, karrigan, says, “Over and out, responsibility is on me. Sorry for letting all down. GG WP BNE.”
Ropz also tweeted, “Out of words… First real low point for the team, as much more was expected. We worked hard for the last 2 weeks to make sure we wouldn’t let you down. Sorry for the terrible performance, we’ll bounce back ❤️ #fazeup.”
This moment was an emotional moment for the former champions. The Ukrainian roster also tweeted and stated their fear for tomorrow as they will face elimination, which is also the first match of the day against Bad News Eagles. NAVI's official Twitter handle says, "Expectations: Playing vs Faze in the grand final Reality: Praying not to join them at the airport."
