Image via Ubisoft/@joao_ferreria
Every tale comes to an end eventually, even the most special and charming stories. Elevate’s lower bracket run is over following the teams’ loss to FaZe Clan.
The Thai side’s journey has been something special. The squad jolted everyone with its chaotic ranked play-style, introducing many operators and concepts that opponents didn’t expect or, at least, didn't know how to counter.
Sadly, Elevate was far from producing another upset.
The APAC South players bit more than what they could chew in Bank, as almost the entirety of their attacks were stopped by their opponents. With a 5-1 defensive half for FaZe Clan, the Brazilians’ just needed three more rounds to win their map pick. “We are just stronger than them in Bank,” admitted Gabriel “cameram4n” Hespanhol. Bank is one of FaZe’s best maps, so a Brazilian victory there was highly expected.
Following such a one-sided contest, Elevate had to come up with a new plan in order to get back on track in the series. Clearly, something changed on Kafe, as Elevate got to put up a fight this time – but that wouldn’t be enough, as the Sweden Major champions were unfazed despite the Thai’s best efforts.
Lucas “soulz1” Schinke’s Yokai play during the dying seconds of the round saved the Brazilians from going to overtime, and sent Elevate back home after a perfectly splendid international debut.
“In Kafe it was closer because they had some really different attacks and knew how to have map control,” explained cameram4n.
It was far from being Elevate’s best game in the venue. From a viewer's perspective, it felt like the squad was playing with the mindset of having already accomplished their goal, as the players were constantly smiling. In fact, the team’s main objective was qualifying for the tournament, everything other than that would be a plus.
“Anyone expected us to make it out of the group stage, but we made it. We don’t regret we lost to FaZe, we don’t regret anything about our SI run, we will take every mistake to improve ourselves and try to get back here next year,” said Paramin “sprOnigiri” Suwanwattana.
Meanwhile, a loss tonight wasn’t in FaZe Clan’s minds. “We didn’t have too much to prepare, Elevate against Rogue was incredibly tough and we didn't know what team to study. When Elevate won we knew what we would pick, me and Ramalho tried to study it, but they played really differently, especially in the operator bans, but we managed to play our game,” admitted cameram4.
FaZe Clan’s next opponent will be DarkZero Esports, a game that will be played tomorrow at 7 pm CET. A victory tomorrow would see them advancing to the lower bracket quarterfinals, the round where FaZe’s SI 2021 run was put to an end.