Monte have defeated PARIVISION in convincing fashion to put the Russian squad one loss from elimination.
Dastan “dastan” Akbayev’s troops prepared differently for the Major, the Kazakh veteran changing his approach to his younger players, but life in the server is still proving difficult even as on-paper favorites.
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dastan: “My players are very young, and maybe when I talk with them like I talk with grown people, it will not work. I changed this”
A 13-7 win on Mirage — after a technical pause where Monte queried whether a Palace spam was legal — got PARIVISION off to a great start, a rare win on a map they have a 4-9 record on in the last three months.
But Ancient went the other direction as Monte read PARIVISION like a book in their eight-round CT half. Vladislav “xiELO” Lysov was caught in his default several times, walking through the B Cave smoke into his demise twice only to find a Monte player waiting on the other side.
It was the same story on Inferno, as Jack “Gizmy” von Spreckelsen called his way around PARIVISION’s stack-heavy style.
Two rounds sum up the match: The first, where Monte walked out Long on a perfect timing to catch the A site off-guard, and the second, where the team read the rotation and win a 3v5 by rotating to the empty B site.
On paper Monte are a squad of misfits, a core of players who have already had their chance in tier two and not made it out. But with Gizmy as in-game leader and Alexander “kakafu” Szymanczyk as coach, they are performing far above the sum of their parts.
The fact that Inferno, a map that Monte barely play, was the decider was a surprise in itself. But you could barely tell, as the squad was so well-prepared in their 13-5 win.
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Gizmy: “Making stage three is what we wanted from the beginning, I’m very proud of the team”
By making Stage 3, Monte have already hit their goal for the Major. But that’s not to say that Gizmy didn’t want a few more scalps on the way out:
“I think I’m at this point very excited to play,” he told HLTV last stage. “I really want to see how the games go. I want to prove something, and this is the perfect chance to do it, of any. It’s the major, the pressure’s on for these tier one teams.”
