To say the IEM Rio 2024 Group Stage has produced a few surprise results would be an understatement. After three days of play, we have our Playoffs bracket, with two teams already locked into a Semi-Finals spot.
Let’s take a look at all of the highlights from IEM Rio 2024 so far!
FURIA and Heroic emerge as surprise Semi-Finalists
Credit: Helena Kristiansson | © ESL
FURIA on their home turf in Rio de Janeiro are a force to be reckoned with. After the IEM Rio 2024 Group Stage, FURIA have already secured a Semi-Finals spot, emerging as winners of a tough Group A. This is as legit a run as you’ll see, beating FaZe, MOUZ, and NAVI along the way. As a reward for their efforts, FURIA will undoubtedly be greeted with an electric home crowd when the Semi-Finals begin. We can’t wait to see it.
On the other side of the bracket, they’re joined as Semi-Finalists by Heroic. Who saw this coming? Certainly not us in our IEM Rio 2024 Power Rankings. Heroic have felt like a bit of a dead team walking of late, so it’s surprising to everyone that they’ve managed to pull this result out of the hat. G2, Astralis, and Vitality was the run here, winning without dropping a map. Impressive – now go one better and reach the Grand Final.
IEM Rio 2024 Quarter-Finals are stacked
Credit: Helena Kristiansson | © ESL
With such unlikely Semi-Finalists, it stands to reason that the Quarter-Finals are absolutely stacked at IEM Rio 2024. On one side, you have Vitality and MOUZ. Vitality got off to a winning start in Brazil, as did MOUZ. Eventually though, MOUZ required a deep Lower Bracket run to make it out of the Groups. At least they didn’t bomb out, which is more than can be said of MOUZ in the last few CS2 tournaments.
Then, there’s NAVI and Virtus.pro. NAVI’s consistency of late is insane, having reached the last five consecutive Grand Finals. It’s a shock that they could only muster a Quarter-Finals berth here, but we still expect them to go one further at least. For Virtus.pro, this is a slight change in fortunes. They’ve struggled of late, and a great Lower Bracket run in IEM Rio’s Group Stage should give confidence they can still do some damage here.
G2 and Astralis bomb out
Credit: IEM on X.
Barely a week after G2 were crowned champions of the BLAST Premier Fall Finals 2024, they have bombed out of IEM Rio 2024 in last place. Is it fatigue? Is it jet lag? We won’t know for sure, but given this was, by the numbers, NiKo’s worst event performance of his entire career, no one will be at all pleased with this performance. With the Major RMR just around the corner, G2 need to be in the best form possible. This was anything but.
Astralis are another team that barely fared any better. They won their best-of-one opener against Eternal Fire, but flopped against Heroic and Virtus.pro, securing an early exit from Rio. It’s still early days for cadiaN’s version of this team, but the external noise about the roster almost makes it difficult to judge how good they are at Counter-Strike on merit alone. They’ll need to sort some problems before the Major RMR – Astralis surely can’t afford to miss another.
