Week 3 of Stage 3 took place last week, as all four regions continued to feature battles for the top-four and safety from the relegation zone.
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 -- “We’re waiting for the real revenge in a best-of-three”
- NA League -- “Our attacks have been basically 50/50, it’s kinda a coin flip”
- Brasileirão -- “We have a lot of skill, but right now we need to work on our organisation”
- APAC Leagues -- “We’ve already learnt our lessons from past stages”
EU League
The EU League this week had two surprise results, as Rogue and Virtus.pro beat NAVI and G2 Esports, respectively. Meanwhile, the match that had been billed as the one to watch, Team BDS vs. Team Empire, ended in a very one-sided 7-2 result for the former.
After this latter game, we heard from BDS captain Bryan "Elemzje" Tebessi about the key rematch from the Six Mexico Major semi-finals and his thoughts on the new Bank rework:
Meanwhile, after Virtus.pro’s 7-5 win over G2 Esports, Pavel "p4sh4" Kosenko came into the post-match interview and explained his team's defensive wins and offensive struggles:
Finally, after Rogue’s 7-5 victory over NAVI, Leon "LeonGids" Giddens who was initially asked about the curious Villa pick:
While Vp and Rogue still sit in seventh and eighth place across the year, they are now both almost certainly clear of the relegation zone. Even Team Secret in ninth is four points ahead of Heroic in the automatic relegation spot, though will have to play in the relegation match.
NA League
In the North American League, meanwhile, the day began with an upset, as the Soniqs beat DarkZero Esports 7-4, and ended with a very important 7-2 win by beastcoast over Mirage. The latter was an especially crucial games for both teams, as they aim to put as much distance between them and the relegation zone as possible.
In between these two games saw the two favourites of TSM and SSG take down Astralis and Oxygen, respectively, in 7-5 scorelines with an elusive Beaulo interview sandwiched between the matches.
Here, Jason "Beaulo" Doty was asked primarily about TSM’s close 6-8 loss against DarkZero the week prior and spoke about his performance across the season so far:
Brasileirão
Onto LATAM, this week saw one of the most predictable weeks of games in the 2021 BR6 season, as all eight games were won by the higher seeded team.
This meant that we got to hear from Team Liquid’s coach of Adenauer "Silence" Alvarenga on Saturday about the internal team dynamics following their 7-2 victory over W7M Gaming. This comes after Liquid lost their prior two games against INTZ and FaZe Clan in two 7-8 scorelines:
As well as this, we heard from Ninjas in Pyjamas’ Julio Giacomelli, who has had a rough stage so far after his team lost its three opening games against Liquid, Santos e-Sports, and Team oNe.
Now, off of its 7-5 win over Black Dragons, Julio had this to say:
On Sunday, the big matchup saw FaZe face off against NiP, which ended in a rather clean 7-4 scoreline from FaZe Clan.
FaZe's Gabriel "cameram4n" Hespanhol spoke about his team’s approach to Oregon:
With these results FaZe Clan, Team Liquid, and Team oNe have all locked in spots at the Copa Elite Six, with NiP and FURIA likely to do so next week. This would thus mean a fight for the final spot between MIBR, Black Dragons, and (possibly) INTZ will be brewing.
APAC Leagues
In APAC, the biggest result of the week came from GUTS, who beat CYCLOPS in a 7-0 scoreline to record only its third win in 18 games over its Japanese rival. Afterwards via a translator Naoki "Yura" Takamoto stated the following about the result:
These comments mimic what SyAIL said after mantis’ win over CAG two weeks ago; that he was “not really sure why [they] won” and had simply “did as practised” to take the win against what’s usually a very formidable CYCLOPS team.
Down in APAC South, Invictus Gaming captain Glen “Lunarmetal” Suryasaputra elucidated upon his team’s climb back to the top despite a protracted battle with ORDER:
Meanwhile, Wildcard Gaming head coach Wille "r0usty" Turunen spoke pointedly regarding Elevate being allowed to hot-swap a player from its academy roster to its APAC South roster:
SiegeGG will be covering all these tournaments as usual so check back for stats, news, and highlights for your favourite teams!