The Brazilian team known as LOUD knocked down Europe’s G2 Esports to the lower bracket after sweeping them 2-0, now they will be facing the North American squad Optic Gaming, who took down Korea’s DRX after 3 very close games. These two teams will face each other on April 22, and whoever wins will advance into the grand finals of the Stage 1 Masters at Reykjavík.
If LOUD manages to win against Optic Gaming, it will be the very first time that we see a Brazilian team reach the grand finals in a Valorant international event, making this a very interesting storyline where Brazil might start to finally place themselves on the map just like they’ve done in other esports like Counter Strike.
Optic Gaming’s revenge against The Guard
In the first round of the lower bracket, Optic Gaming took down their fellow North American team, The Guard, and that was quite unexpected considering that the last time these two teams met in the NA Challengers, The Guard beat Optic convincingly in a best-of-5 series.
After that, Optic had to face Korea’s best team, DRX, but it wasn’t as easy as some people might have expected. DRX won the first map and it wasn’t even close, then Optic Gaming came up on top in the next two maps, Icebox and Split, but unlike the first one, those weren’t one-sided at all.
LOUD performance versus European teams
On the other side of the bracket, LOUD had to face Team Liquid in the first round, and they played three maps in a back-and-forth series, in which Team Liquid completely stomped LOUD in map 2. This might have been a surprise because Team Liquid came in as the 4th best team in Europe after they were invited to this tournament because Europe’s strongest team, FunPlus Phoenix, was unable to attend due to travel restrictions in Ukraine and Russia.
Now what happened next was even more surprising, LOUD took down with ease the EMEA Challengers finalist, G2 Esports. This series makes us wonder if LOUD is consistent enough to win it all in this tournament. But there is one thing that we can be sure of, and that is Sacy’s carry potential because he popped off in his series against G2 Esports, where he scored a kill-difference of +20, the highest of all players in the match.
LOUD victories against the European teams had a lot of impact on the Brazilian community because those two wins are the second and third time a Brazilian team took down a European team in the Valorant competitive circuit. It’s going to be exciting to watch how LOUD continues to perform in this event because we all know the Brazilian player’s potential when it comes to FPS games.Whoever wins this match will secure a spot in the grand final, but the team that loses is not out of the tournament yet. The loser of this match will have to face the winner of ZETA DIVISION vs Paper Rex which will occur on the same day, after the LOUD vs Optic match. You’ll be able to catch all the action on the Valorant official twitch channel on April 22.
