Week 5 of Stage 2 took place last week, as all four regions neared their respective ends of Stage 2.
Following most of these games were interviews with the victorious teams, so for those that missed them, we've summarised the best quotes and responses from the players below.
Jump to:
- EU League -- "Smoke's a good roaming operator"
- NA League-- "Hotancold's just nasty, he's the best player on their team by far"
- Brasileirão -- "They are very predictable, actually"
- APAC Leagues -- "We're not going there just to participate, let's just say that"
EU League
Starting in Europe, G2 Esports came within two rounds of qualifying for Mexico. However, despite celebrations from Lucas "Hungry" Reich, the loss of one point thanks to overtime meant that the team's Mexico tickets are not punched yet.
Here's what Ben "CTZN" McMillan had to say about the game:
Earlier in the week, Vitality themselves were involved in a very important game against the then-league leaders of Na'Vi.
In a big surprise, Vitality took the win in a 7-1 fashion to both revive their Mexico hopes and pull Na'Vi down to fourth-place.
Here's what Doki had to say about this loss on Thursday:
By the end of these two play days, G2, BDS, and Empire were all tied for first place with 16 points, while Na'Vi sits in fourth with 15.
After just a head-to-head difference separated the top-two last stage, Stage 2 is somehow looking to be even tighter as all four of these teams could lock in a spot at the Mexico Major with a single win across the final two play days.
NA League
Over in America, while no teams joined SSG in guaranteeing a ticket to Mexico this week, TSM and the Soniqs are both extremely close to doing so.
This is as the two teams beat Mirage and XSET respectively in two very one-sided results increasing their lead in the top-four and almost ending Mirage's Mexico hopes.
This 7-3 TSM win, meanwhile, means TSM needs just two points against the Soniqs and Oxygen over the next two weeks to lock-in a top-four finish. The game itself was the first one back with Geo playing which, after a fairly close start. Achieved in particular ran away with it with an 11-3 performance.
Here's what the team's coach of Owen "Pojoman" Mitura said during the post-game interview:
Elsewhere, there were also two other key results as bc lost their third overtime game and DarkZero won their fifth such game, pushing the latter team in the top-four, while Disrupt beat Oxygen in an incredibly close 8-7 result.
Brasileirão
This weekend was the finale of Stage 2's BR6 League as three play days -- 13 Bo1s -- took place from Friday to Sunday.
While pretty much the entire stage had seen constant upsets, this weekend was somewhat tame with the favourites of FURIA, Liquid, FaZe, and MIBR winning on Friday, while NiP suffered the first shock defeat on Saturday against INTZ, 7-2.
Their coach of João "JP" Pedro Teixeira stated the following about the win:
Unfortunately for INTZ, this win was for nought, as they were too far away to qualify for the Copa Elite Six at this point. Liquid, FaZe, NiP, FURIA, and oNe had already been locked in and Sunday saw MIBR and Black Dragons fight for the sixth spot.
These two teams had already met on Saturday, which led to a massive 7-1 win for Black Dragons (BD), but unfortunately did not have a follow-up interview.
This meant that BD needed just two points against oNe to guarantee a top-six finish, while MIBR needed a win against Liquid and a loss for BD to go through.
In the end, an 8-6 win over Team oNe meant Black Dragons earned their two required points meaning they qualified for the Copa Elite Six event.
Team Liquid, meanwhile, had a fairly mixed weekend. While they won all three of their games, they were in closer results than they had liked, as BD took them to 7-5 and oNe took them to 8-6, while MIBR only managed two rounds against them.
These results still meant they ended the stage in first place and are thus the first seed into tomorrow's Copa Elite Six ahead of NiP, despite their Six Invitational title and solid start to the stage.
Thiago "xS3xyCake" Reis stated the following about the 7-2 MIBR win:
This weekend was also big for Team Liquid fans as the Team Liquid BR YouTube channel launched, set to feature a number of behind the scenes videos in the coming months (though mainly in Portuguese).
Finally, Sunday also saw a tight result between Ninjas in Pyjamas and Santos, which NiP managed to edge out 8-6 on Coastline.
Here's what Julio "Julio" Giacomelli said about the win:
With the BR6 now over for Stage 2, the six-best Brazilian teams will be facing the two best teams from Mexico and South America this coming week in the Copa Elite Six.
Here, the top four teams progress onwards to the Mexico Major, a tournament that Fenix and Atheris (in particular) will be eager to reach.
APAC Leagues
The big news in the Asia Pacific region this week came from CYCLOPS as their victory over TALON (7-4) meant that they guaranteed themselves a first-place finish in the APAC North Division, locking in tickets to the Mexico Major.
Here's what the team's Italian coach of Riccardo "Hybrid" Massimino Font said about the result:
We almost saw a similar outcome in APAC South also, as the two top teams of QConfirm and Elevate met in a match where a win for the former would've also locked in first place in the league and a Mexico Major spot.
This game instead ended 7-4 to Elevate, meaning the two teams are now tied on 12 points with just one game remaining.
After the match, Paramin "sprOnigiri" Suwanwattana came on the post-match interview and said the following:
Week 6 will kick off its games tonight with BR6 games being replaced by the Elite Six tournament from Tuesday to Sunday.
SiegeGG will be covering all these tournaments as usual so check back for stats, news, and highlights for your favourite teams!