Wasteful Imperial punished by shaky Cloud9

After watching fellow Brazilians 00NATION fall at the hands of the surprisingly stubborn IHC team, Imperial faced on paper a much much tougher test to avoid the embarrassment of not winning a single match at their home Major. Cloud9 never would have imagined being in this position, they were a dark horse to win the Major let alone go out 0-3, and with Dmitry "sh1ro" Sokolov averaging a 1.71 rating at the event it was puzzling how they had ended up in this position.

Imperial would at least get to play their favourite map, Overpass, the map they qualified to Rio on after besting Complexity in a close overtime match and they would have to win it to have any hope of staying alive in the competition. It got off to a rocky start, losing the pistol and the next five rounds left them at a 5-0 deficit.

With Fernando "fer" Alvarenga and Marcelo "chelo" Cespedes leading the way, Imperial managed to secure themselves two gun rounds and a flawless anti-eco round to close the gap to 3-5. A worrying early sign was iconic IGL and AWPer Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo sitting on a grand total of 0 kills after nine rounds.

Another gun-round conversion from Imperial gave their T-side a fourth round and up against just a solo M4 they were able to convert a fifth to tie up the game. Cloud9 were by far the favorites, and that wouldn't change even if they went down a map, but Imperial was making their presence known. A massive round from FalleN helped the Brazilian side convert a 3v5 to leave them once again one round behind at 6-7.

Six would be the maximum number of rounds the Imperial side would be able to put up with them yet to play the more favoured CT-side. sh1ro was sitting on a mammoth 93 ADR at the half swap and the Imperial side would need to find a way to shut down the Cloud9 AWPer on their CT-side to lock up their map pick.

Another big double kill from the legendary AWPer gave his team the first gun round of the second half, and now Imperial started to look like the Imperial who battled their way through the RMR gauntlet to Rio. It allowed the Imperial side to even up the scoreline and go into the 19th round with the gun advantage.

The destiny that seemed to forge them an unlikely path to the Major seemed to be playing its hand again as Imperial continued to stand firm against the Cloud9 T-side, their newest addition once again proved how key his extra firepower was with chelo sitting on 21 kills after 22 rounds. A four-round lead for the Brazilians gave them a healthy advantage to close out the map.

Despite FalleN picking up another 2k, Imperial's lead slipped to just two rounds and a weak buy in the following round would make it harder to keep Cloud9 at bay for much longer. A massive 3v3 hold on the B site, once again courtesy of FalleN managed to keep the Cloud9 squad at arms reach.

Another massive round was played out to give the Brazilians map point, as in a 3v1 the CTs decided to grit their teeth and stick the defuse, and despite Timofey "interz" Yakushin cleaning up all 3 kills the defuse had come in half a second earlier. The majority Russian team managed to keep map one alive bringing the score to 12-15.

Cloud9 managed to rescue the next two rounds and looked good to force the map to OT as Imperial began to waver on their CT-side. In the final round, it came down to Father Time, as despite cleaning up the final kill on the retake Vinicius "VINI" Figueiredo ran out of time to defuse the bomb, leading us to OT on the first map.

Cloud9 rectified their mistakes from the first 30 rounds and looked dominant in the first half of OT, taking an 18-15 lead and leaving themselves needing just one round on the CT-side. sh1ro stood tall once again finishing map one 19-15 and moving into Vertigo a map FalleN's side are extremely uncomfortable on.

Imperial managed to steal the pistol round on Vertigo but they could have got a 14-0 lead and the entire world would still place their bets on Cloud9 on Vertigo. Imperial would convert the follow-up ecos and the first gun round off a big round from chelo, but would nearly give away a round against a Tec-9 force buy.

FalleN claimed a big 1v1 win against his opposing AWPer sh1ro to put Imperial 6-0 up and force the Russian side to take a tactical timeout. Imperial may have had an unlikely lead but they held a big lead on their favourite map Overpass and threw it away, so it would not be a surprise to see them struggle to hold the lead on a map they are less at home on.

Imperial continued their impressive defense, bringing themselves up to a 10-1 lead with fer, chelo and VINI leading the way. A failure to properly build up their economy due to a number of close rounds left Cloud9 in a good position to pick up a few rounds toward the end of the half. Imperial were unable to manage additional rounds in the half, leaving them with a 10-5 half, by no means an unassailable lead.

However, Imperial being able to lock up the pistol round gave them an extra round. Cloud9 decided to try and put a halt to the Brazilian T-side before it got rolling by force buying into the second round, and a 1v2 by Sergey "Ax1Le" Rykhtorov made sure they put a stop to the hometown party. chelo returned the favor with a 1v1 of his own on Imperial's eco round and brought them up to 12 rounds.

Imperial cleaned up the next three rounds to give them nine map points. They wasted the first four, barely getting a sniff at closing it out the experienced Brazilians took a time out ahead of the 26th round to try and get themselves over the line that they couldn't on Overpass. It looked like they had it in the bag with a 5v3 and only sh1ro on the A site but an outrageous decision to try and plant the bomb from Ricardo "boltz" Prass led to his team throwing away the advantage.

FalleN's experience failed him in the 29th round as he failed to stick the bomb in a 2v2 allowing Cloud9 into the site before the Brazilians got set up in post-plant positions. Cloud9 silenced the Brazilian crowd by closing out the final round and overcoming the nine map points the Imperial team had to take it to overtime. All the momentum was once again on the side of the Russian team.

After closing out the first round easily, Cloud9 felt the wrath of the old man FalleN's AWP and VINI, who converted a massive 2v4 to give the Brazilians at least one round on their T side. sh1ro reached 41 kills in the fourth round of OT but it was not enough to secure the round as VINI claimed victory in the 1v1 to tie the scores.

Another misplay from the Brazilian side allowed Cloud9 to exploit a timing in mid to access the B site for free forcing Imperial to have to pull off what the Cloud9 team had done to them so many times, save a map point. VINI and FalleN once again came up huge holding off the entire Cloud9 force from being able to enter the B site.

sh1ro was a human can opener as he split open the A site on his own with 20 seconds left and two men down to give them the first round of the second overtime. In what was becoming one the most mental matches of CS that I can remember watching, fer went huge with a 2k on 5hp dodging the Cloud9 molotovs and grenades.

Cloud9 managed to find a way into the previously impenetrable B site and lock down the 3v3 post-plant to give them the slim one-round advantage on the CT-side. Without sh1ro being in the form of his life, there is no doubt that Cloud9 would have lost this match five times over, but unfortunately for the hometown heroes, sh1ro was very much alive and ready in the server to ruin the Brazilian dream run.

Imperial were punished at the end of the day by wasting their map points when they had them, and they had plenty of them, whilst Cloud9 should be giving sh1ro a pay rise immediately for saving them from an extremely embarrassing defeat.

Cloud9 are now set to play against North American side Evil Geniuses in another elimination match in the 1-2 pool, tomorrow at 05:00PM.