Brazilian teams have put everything on the line at VALORANT Champions after a year of failure at other international events. Brazil is 2-1 at the biggest VALORANT tournament ever, with Team Vikings winning over Crazy Raccoon and Vivo Keyd taking out Acend.
The Brazilian region, while a hotspot for VALORANT, hasn’t done well at previous Masters events in Iceland and Germany. Team Vikings managed to beat Thai team X10 Crit at VALORANT Champions Tour Stage 2: Masters Reykjavík, but then fell to both Sentinels and Team Liquid to end their tournament. Sharks Esports was knocked out of the tournament after losing to NUTURN Gaming and KRÜ Esports. Neither Vivo Keyd nor Havan Liberty made it out of groups at VCT Stage 3: Masters Berlin.
While so much has changed since those tournaments, Brazil wasn’t expected to make much noise at Champions. Upcomer’s own power rankings placed Team Vikings dead last. The low expectations were nothing new to players on Brazilian teams.
Brazil is actually making noise at VALORANT Champions
“Brazil is good in every game actually. We don’t need to worry too much about what people say,” Vivo Keyd player Leonardo “mwzera” Serrati said after beating Acend. “We just needed our time to be able to show our game, to show ourselves. And this right now is just a win, it’s just one game and we have a lot ahead of us too and we have a lot to show you.”
Almost every team at Champions trained at extensive bootcamps ahead of the tournament. Teams were able to practice against others from outside their region, which is a huge change of pace for those from South America.
“One of the things that really made a difference was the boot camp before,” said Vivo Keyd player Gabriel “v1xen” Martins. The team had some issues that postponed their bootcamp, but v1xen cited the training as the major difference between their performance at Champions and their performance during Masters 3.
FURIA Esports, the lone team to make it out of the South American Last Chance Qualifier, were widely viewed as one of the weakest team’s headed into VALORANT Champions. They didn’t have international experience, but they nearly beat Sentinels after a tight three-game series that ended following a lengthy tech pause.
Sentinels are viewed as one of the top teams in the world. The close match gave FURIA a lot of confidence before their match against KRÜ Esports on Dec. 5.
“The match between Furia and Sentinels shocked me a bit,” Acend player Patryk “starxo” Kopczyński said. “But you can’t underestimate anyone here.”
Vivo Keyd said they believe that Acend were the biggest roadblock the team had to get over in the group stage, and v1xen said that he thinks they can handle either Envy or X10 Crit more easily when they play them next on Dec. 4. Catch all the action on VALORANT’s official Twitch channel.
