The newly crowned BLAST Fall Finals Champions have been sent home by Eternal Fire in Rio. G2 failed to win a single map throughout the entire event.
After starting their IEM Rio 2024 campaign with a loss to Heroic the day before, G2 were facing elimination versus the Turkish powerhouse of Eternal Fire on Tuesday.
How did G2 get eliminated in this fashion?
It is very hard to explain how this could happen, especially this shortly after winning one of the biggest events of the year a week before.
First things first: The map veto. G2 elected to start on the T-site of Eternal Fire's map choice, Anubis. They got off to a slow start, just like they did against Heroic the day before.
G2's squad overall just did not look as sharp as they did back then in Copenhagen. Only Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov has shown his class, finishing the series +7 in kills.
He achieved this, despite his team only winning a total of 10 rounds across both maps.
He had to win a 1v4 clutch to put G2 on the board:
It's a @G2m0NESY 1v4 CLUTCH for G2's first round #IEM pic.twitter.com/gL4RAOcdnj
— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) October 8, 2024
Only 3 rounds in the first half, only 1 more in the second half for G2. A super quick 13-4 win for Eternal Fire.
We were just warming up, right? pic.twitter.com/BtBJ630eM3
— G2 CS (@G2CSGO) October 8, 2024
EF got carried by an excellent performance of Özgür "woxic" Eker, who finished with a ridiculous 21-4 K/D-ratio!
On G2's pick of Mirage, then, things look surprisingly similar. It was once again the Turks, who were dictating the pace and winning the rounds.
Assisting in woxic in slandering G2 was former BIG Clan superstar Ismailcan "XANTARES" Dörtkardeş, who lead the scoreboard overall with a 1.66 rating.
The two of them also won EF this round:
.@w0xic is filthy Replays powered by @IntelGaming #IEM pic.twitter.com/cMpDGsxe6S
— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) October 8, 2024
Besides m0NESY's best efforts, the rest of his team just could not get firing. It was one of the worst events overall for their star player, Nikola "NiKo" Kovač.
He had some choice words on Twitter/X following his teams' elimination:
I was fucking bot, worst performance I have ever had
— NiKo (@G2NiKo) October 8, 2024
Finally, to find any reasoning for their struggles - their T-sides have been atrocious all event long.
It has either been Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa or m0NESY making some plays or them losing the rounds.
Recently acquired in game leader Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski's calling duties will be questioned again following this event.
He only managed to silence his critics for one week, following their win at BLAST.
What do you think was the reason for G2's surprisingly early elimination in Rio? Lack of practice after an event win? Or just a bad few days at the office?