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Blast Pro Series: Sao Paulo comes to a close with another (surprise, surprise) victory going in favor of Astralis. Despite the CSGO tournament featuring some of the strongest teams in the scene such as Liquid, MIBR or ENCE, it seemed like there was no one that could outplay the Danes. Meanwhile, we saw a very disappointing performance by MIBR, a team that played on home soil.

The Road to Victory

Blast Pro Series features a unique tournament system. Teams play a series of best-of-one (bo1) matches on maps determined at the beginning of the tournament. A general ranking is then updated based on wins and then round difference. Astralis won all of their bo1 encounters beating Liquid, ENCE, NiP, MIBR, and FaZe Clan twice. Astralis’ extremely deep map pool resulted in opponents always steering the veto either towards Overpass or Dust2, maps that are considered to be less favored by the Danish side. Yet, that didn’t matter at all as Astralis would beat everyone before going on to face Liquid in a best-of-three final.

Despite the final turning out to be slightly more of a challenge, in the end, Astralis prevailed. The word slightly is key here as Liquid managed to edge out their map pick, Dust2, 16:13 in their favor. Unfortunately for them, Inferno and Overpass were playgrounds for the Danes. With Astralis’ Inferno pick, Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander stepped up, finishing with the highest rating and sealing the deal at 16-8 after a dominant 11-4 half. Liquid was already bleeding but what happened on the decider map, Overpass, was pure domination. This time gla1ve would have a quiet game while his teammates went on a rampage with Andreas ‘Xyp9x’ Højsleth leading the charge. The decider map finished rapidly with Astralis letting Liquid have only two rounds in a final score of 16-2. You can check out the highlights of the bloodbath below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhPdQStoXYA

MIBR fail to come through for the fans

With a return to being an all-Brazilian lineup, hopes were high for MIBR to step up on home territory. Things didn’t pan out as everyone hoped. Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo’s team failed to put up a fight and lost all of their bo1 encounters. On top of that, they lost the showmatch against ENCE where all players played 1v1 matches. None of the MIBR players won their match. All of this shows the current state of MIBR. Their run at IEM Katowice earlier this year was promising as they reached the semi-final before getting blown-out by none other than Astralis.

Despite the rough run in Sao Paulo, FalleN stays positive for the future of his team by promising the fans that they’ll be working hard to improve and make the lineup work down the stretch.

The takeaway from Sao Paulo

Transitioning from an Astralis-dominated 2018, Astralis continue to forge their era in 2019 with their win at the IEM Katowice Major and now Blast Pro Series: Sao Paulo. Perhaps the main takeaway from this event is that right now, there is no one that can challenge the Danish lineup on the professional CSGO scene. We’ve seen Astralis take on top 10 teams, the best of the best, and yet they’ve just lost one map by a small margin the entire tournament. It seems like it will be a while before we see a proper challenger to the throne which right now has the Astralis banner hung firmly over it.


What did you think of Blast Pro Series: Sao Paulo? How long will the Astralis era continue in CSGO and who can be the team to potentially dethrone them? Let us know in the comments below and remember to follow us!