BLAST Pro Series São Paulo: Day 1 recap

The first day of BLAST Pro Series São Paulo is over and the victors of round 1 and 2 have been found.

Home soil favorites MIBR had a rocky start to the tournament going 0-2, while all other teams went 1-1 except for Astralis who ends the day at 2-0 after two very close games.

Marcelo "coldzera" David, MIBR:

- We are dissapointed that we go into day two with a 0-2 record, but everything is still open and we will do everything to get 3 wins tomorrow. We want to show the crowd our appreciation for their support, so no matter the results, we will play our hearts out tomorrow, Marcelo "coldzera" David says.

Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen, Astralis:

- Our games were close. I feel like the entire day has been weird for both us and our opponents. Everyone are making mistakes, but I'm really happy that we won our games. Knowing how important points are and the fact that there's no overtime puts a lot of pressure on everyone. We were sloppy at times," Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen says.

See the photos from the exciting first day at BLAST Pro Series São Paulo here.

Leaderboard

A closer look at the matches

Round 1

Ninjas in Pyjamas (16) vs. FaZe Clan (7)

Map: Mirage

Ninjas in Pyjamas showed little mercy for FaZe Clan. Ending the half in dominant fashion, 11-4, and proceeding to choke out FaZe Clan until winning the match 16-7. The young stars REZ and draken displayed an especially impressive showing of Counter-Strike.

REZ was named MVP of the match by the analyst panel.

ENCE (16) vs. MIBR (9)

Map: Train

ENCE didn’t appear to be intimidated by the fact that MIBR was playing on home soil. The Finnish team put themselves comfortably in the lead 11-0 before MIBR finally bit back and got a round. ENCE ended the first half 13-2 and just as it looked like MIBR was about to mount a comeback, allu pulled off a 1 vs. 4 clutch to put ENCE at matchpoint. From here, ENCE went on to win 16-9. Something to take away from the match is that three ENCE players ended the game at 19 kills with the two last players following closely behind at 16 kills each, showing a scary synergy from Finland’s superteam.

Allu pulled off a crazy 1 vs. 4 clutch to secure matchpoint against MIBR.

Astralis (16) vs. Team Liquid (13)

Map: Dust2

The two best teams in the world brought the heat to São Paulo. Team Liquid started out strong, stomping the Danes and securing a 6-0 lead. Astralis managed to keep their heads in the game and ended the half 8-7 in Team Liquid’s favour. A lot of back and forth rounds with Liquid slightly in front turned when dev1ce won a 1 vs. 2 clutch to equalize the score to 10-10. Six rounds later the score was 13-13 and still anybody’s game but Astralis kept their cool and edged past Team Liquid, 16-13.

Magisk played his heart out to close out the nail biting match against Team Liquid.

Round 2

Team Liquid (16) vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas (3)

Map: Overpass

The NIP magic didn't last throughout the first day of BLAST Pro Series São Paulo as Team Liquid ran over the Ninjas completely on Overpass. The North Americans secured 12 rounds in the first half and went on to win 4 consectuive rounds in the second half winning 16-3.

EliGE might have improved his BLAST score by defeating NIP with an unbelievable 32-9 score on Overpass.

FaZe Clan (16) vs. MIBR (11)

Map: Nuke

MIBR came into the tournament stating that their confidence on Nuke was growing. It showed in their game against FaZe Clan with the Brazilian home favorites gaining momentum in the early game. Despite that, the half ended quite close with MIBR only leading 9-6. After the first half FaZe Clan woke up and went on a streak taking the lead 13-10 before MIBR managed to get another round in the bag. It was not enough to knock FaZe Clan off their feet who closed the match 16-11 with an incredible 3 kill round from GuardiaN.

GuardiaN put the nail in the coffin for MIBR on nuke.

ENCE vs. Astralis

Map: Dust2

The Danes had an accelerant start to the match, starting out 5-0. ENCE responded with 5 beautiful back-to-back rounds, promising an exciting match between the two Major finalists. Astralis were able to pull 5 more rounds together after that, ending the half at 10-5 in favour of the Danes. From here, ENCE mounted a scary comeback and the Finnish team slowly caught up to Astralis before being stunned by a 1 vs. 2 clutch by Magisk putting the score at 12-10 for Astralis. In the end, it came down to all 30 rounds being played with Astralis narrowly closing out the match at 16-14.

Despite falling short to Astralis, 17-year old sergej put up a proper fight.

That's it for day 1 of BLAST Pro Series São Paulo.

Tomorrow is when the real show begins. 7,000 wild Brazilian fans will fill out the arena of Ginásio do Ibirapuera. Famous Brazilian streamer Gaules will be there with his legendary fan group La Tribonera and at the end of the day we will have crowned our BLAST Pro Series São Paulo champions. You do not want to miss out on this - go follow our Twitch channel and be notified when we go live with the historic event in wonderful São Paulo.