Three Brazilian teams entered the 2019 StarLadder Berlin Major, yet only one of them will feature in the last 16.

The tournament kicked off on Friday, August 23 with the Challenger series, which welcomed 16 CS:GO esports teams from all across the globe.

Out of 16 participants in the Challenger series, the most represented region was Europe with six teams, followed by CIS with four, the Americas with four and Asia with two.

Two of those American teams hailed from the ever-growing Brazilian esports scene, and both INTZ eSports and FURIA Esports headed to Germany with big ambitions after failing to make an impact at the IEM Katowice Major.

FURIA finished 20th-22nd in Poland back in March, while INTZ had never reached the main draw of a Major until they qualified for this year’s event in Berlin via the play-ins.

Hoping to make their country proud and qualify for the Legends stage, the two teams jumped into the arena with varying degrees of success.

FURIA completely dismantled HellRaisers in round one (16-6), which earned them a spot in round two, where they met their match in the Serbian squad CR4ZY.

A close fixture that started in FURIA’s favour took a sudden turn in the second half, when CR4ZY tore through them with an impressive 10-2 run to win the match 16-11.

Next on the menu for FURIA were forZe, who also outplayed FURIA in the second half to serve Gustavo “yeL” Knittel and his teammates a painful 16-10 defeat.

FURIA’s last chance to earn a spot in the next stage was to win against Syman in round four, but the CIS team prevailed with a 16-9 win on Train followed by an even more impressive 16-7 win on Inferno.

INTZ eSports did not enjoy a very bountiful experience in their debut CS:GO Major venture.

An embarrassing 5-16 defeat against North in round one was followed with a 9-16 defeat against Vitality in round two, but INTZ had one last shot against the Australian top dogs, Grayhound.

The Brazilians started round three with a 5-16 defeat on Train, followed by a solid 16-14 win at Nuke to level the series.

Unfortunately, INTZ ran out of steam in the third and last map, where they suffered an embarrassing 7-16 defeat to end their maiden Major campaign with a 0-3 record and an alarming -36 round differential.

With INTZ eSports and FURIA Gaming both out of the tournament, MIBR are the last remaining hope for South America.

They qualified for Berlin with a strong third-fourth finish at IEM Katowice, but the recent departure of Marcelo “coldzera” David has left the team severely weakened.

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