FURIA do the Imperial march
The all Brazilian matchup is set to be a fiery affair as Vinicius "VINI" Figueiredo was pitted against his old team for only the second time since his benching. Their last matchup went heavily in FURIA's favor, however, that was IEM Dallas 2022 and Imperial's current squad is completely different from then. Despite FURIA reaching the semi-finals of the IEM Rio Major, they come into ESL Pro League Season 17 on the back of a, frankly, abysmal performance at IEM Katowice where they failed to make it out of the play-in stage after losses to IHC and BIG.
With both sides almost pretty evenly matched up, the game started on Imperial's pick of Inferno, where Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo's squad did not get off to the hottest start on their T-side, going down 2-4 early on. While Imperial would try to get back into the half, they would not get through FURIA's defenses as they end it 6-9.
For FURIA, they couldn't have asked for a better first half to kickstart their winning ways, but would find some struggles in the second half as Imperial would tie it up at 9-9. Thanks to Kaike "KSCERATO" Cerato leading the charge, the squad would be able to close out Imperial's map pick 16-13.
The second map would be FURIA's home ground of Mirage, a map that is synonymous with Brazilian squads over the years and it would be no different today as both teams showed prowess on it. Imperial were in full control of the match as, they raced off into a 9-6 lead at half time on Mirage and even got themselves onto map point with a 15-19 lead.
Somehow FURIA managed to launch a comeback, spearheaded by AWPer Rafael 'saffee' Costa who finished the map with 33 kills with a 1.35 rating. On the other side it was Ricardo 'boltz' Prass who led the way as he finished the match as the only Imperial player with a positive rating across the series. FURIA will now face MOUZ whilst Imperial will have to play the Portuguese side SAW.
FURIAImperial| FURIA |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Rafael 'saffee' Costa |
58 - 36 | +22 | 81.0 | 75.0% | 1.34 |
| Kaike 'KSCERATO' Cerato |
45 - 33 | +12 | 83.5 | 79.7% | 1.29 |
| Andrei 'arT' Piovezan |
37 - 36 | +1 | 65.3 | 70.3% | 1.01 |
| Yuri 'yuurih' Santos |
31 - 36 | -5 | 59.5 | 75.0% | 0.96 |
| André 'drop' Abreu |
37 - 41 | -4 | 65.0 | 67.2% | 0.96 |
| Imperial |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ricardo 'boltz' Prass |
41 - 42 | -1 | 74.2 | 73.4% | 1.06 |
| Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes |
34 - 39 | -5 | 64.4 | 64.1% | 0.95 |
| Jhonatan 'JOTA' Willian |
37 - 41 | -4 | 65.1 | 70.3% | 0.94 |
| Vinicius 'VINI' Figueiredo |
36 - 45 | -9 | 69.8 | 70.3% | 0.91 |
| Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo |
33 - 41 | -8 | 57.6 | 59.4% | 0.87 |
