Team Vitality win IEM Rio 2023

It was about time for Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and his teammates to win another CS:GO trophy at an S-tier event. Unfortunately for Heroic and Casper “cadiaN” Moller, they lost yet another Grand Final in Rio de Janeiro. It seems that no matter how hard they try, there’s always a final boss that they cannot defeat.

IEM Rio 2023 was full of great moments and the audience was fantastic. Natus Vincere, the team that was expected to win, got eliminated by Heroic in the semifinals despite having numerous chances to win the first map and then potentially the match.

Both Vitality and Heroic were among the favorites, but few expected the French side to win.

https://twitter.com/TeamVitality/status/1650221743603056646

IEM Rio 2023 Results

This was not a huge CS:GO event. The prize pool was only $250.000 and some of the best teams in the world, such as G2 Esports, did not take part in it. But it was still an excellent opportunity to prepare for the Paris Major, which will likely turn out to be the most prestigious CS:GO competition of 2023.

IEM Rio started with 16 teams divided into two groups of eight. In group A, Natus Vincere, BIG, and Heroic managed to advance to the playoffs, to the detriment of Ninjas in Pyjamas, MOUZ, and 9INE.

In group B, Cloud9, FURIA Esports, and Team Vitality were the teams that qualified. Along the way, they eliminated Fnatic, OG, and FaZe Clan.

The playoffs started with two matches that could have easily ended with different results. Heroic defeated FURIA in front of their own fans, just as they had done at IEM Rio Major six months ago. To make things even more dramatic, Heroic’s victory came after FURIA won the first map (16-12).

On the third map, Ancient, FURIA had a 9-6 lead after the first half. But they still ended up losing.

In the match between BIG and Vitality, the French side won but only thanks to the remarkable performance of Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen and ZywOo. Both players ended the match with a K-D score of 42-31. On both maps, the score was 12-16.

In the semifinals, Na’Vi started with a painful 22-25 defeat against Heroic on Overpass. They had around five opportunities to win the map and failed every single time. On Ancient, they were clearly not feeling well and lost the first half 1-14. The match was practically over at that point.

https://twitter.com/b1tcs/status/1649911382714769408

The battle between Cloud9 and Vitality was even more dramatic. C9 won the first map (16-6) and the first half of the second map (12-3). And from that score, Vitality managed to come back and win both the map and the match.

In the Grand Final, both maps finished with close scores: 13-16 on Vertigo and 12-16 on Inferno. To everyone’s surprise, the man who carried Vitality to victory wasn’t ZywOo but Emil “Magisk” Reif.

Header: ESL