Making a Brazilian team that could win a Major

Considering Brazil won two Majors in 2016 and was home to one of the greatest squads in Counter-Strike history, Brazilian CS has been awful for a little while now. Well, unless you count random top 16 placements at ESL Pro Leagues as successes, that is.

But FURIA won Elisa we hear you say, and yes, they did, but so would we. Probably. 
Elisa Masters aside, considering the players within the various Brazilian teams, results since the IEM Rio Major have been incredibly flat.

To top it all off, following on from the latest FURIA failures at the PGL Major Copenhagen and the benching of Andrei “arT” Piovezan, FURIA co-owner Andre Akkari has come out and said that “Brazilian organizations, with Brazilian staff, Brazilian players, everything 100 percent Brazilian, will never win anything again.

Now, admittedly, that may be true. The impact of a European coach would definitely not go amiss, especially now that Wilton “zews” Prado is locked into a contract at Liquid, but that doesn’t mean that a group of Brazilian players couldn’t go on to return to the South American nation to its glory days.

There are a whole host of players that could take a Brazilain roster to the next level, so let’s take a look at them.

The captain

biguzera’s call-up to the premier Brazilian side has been a long time coming. He impressed after taking the helm of paiN last year, and with a squad of nobodies, he managed to do so again at the first CS2 Major. 

An in-game leader who is capable of also performing as a star player, he has all the fragging ability that is lacking from other options like Vinicius “VINI” Figueiredo or even arT. His inclusion would also allow for an upgrade in the AWP department, but more on that later.

A player who takes up many of the same rotator roles as many other IGLs in the current meta, unlike many of those other IGLs, biguzera actually manages to put up good numbers in them. His 6.1 rating is very respectable and so too is his 0.72 kills per round.

The sniper

Okay, Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo fanboys, this one may hurt, but let’s face it, FalleN is washed up now. If he wasn’t, he might not have let arT strip the FURIA captaincy away from him.

Sadly though, he did, and as we’ve seen from his performances since then, he’s not actually that valuable unless he’s also IGLing. It’s a shame given what he was to Brazil in his prime, but no one’s prime can last forever.

So with that in mind, for our Brazilian team, we’ve gone for PGL Major Krakow grand finalist, HEN1. Now playing for Imperial, HEN1 is still providing why he’s the best AWPer in the region and his 5.9 rating is evidence to that.

HEN1 is a maverick player, an AWPer who can take over a game in the blink of an eye and secure a round from out of nowhere. He’s exactly the type of electric player a team like this needs, and that’s why he’s the perfect pick.

The pieces worth taking

Although we may have been a little hard on FURIA so far in this article, that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t take any of their players - we’d be foolish to not include Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato and Yuri “yuurih” Santos in this team.

Without a doubt, KSCERATO is one of the best rifles in the world. He made it into the HLTV top 20 last year despite FURIA having no real achievements and his 6.4 rating would ensure that he would remain the star of this team. He can star as either an anchor or rotator on CT side, and is an absolute must if you ever hope to have a truly successful Brazilian team again.

His FURIA teammate yuurih is a similar story. He’s not quite on the same level, but he has a tonne of elite-level experience thanks to the exploits of FURIA since they broke through in 2018. His 6.1 rating is very strong, and he would be a very capable rotator to line up alongside biguzera. 

The final piece

 For the final piece in this team, there are a number of options. Legacy’s Bruno “latto” Rebelatto is one, his 6.4 rating in recent months is incredibly impressive, and he was a big reason as to why his team exceeded expectations at the PGL Major Copenhagen and got a big win over FURIA.

Another option is Imperial’s Lucas “decenty” Bacelar, a player Imperial plucked from out of nowhere who has been a very strong pickup for the team and excels in the remaining anchor spots this team needs to fill.

However, there is also a left-field option in SAW’s Rafael “arrozdoce” Wing. arrozdoce has starred for SAW this year and is surely bound for a big move in the future. He’s potentially not as good of a fit as the other two, but this team could certainly be the answer.

With all that said, for our pick, we’re going to go with decenty. latto is a very good player, but he’s been around for a while, and decenty might have greater potential than him. As for arrozdoce, he’s very good and he might speak the same language, but we’d prefer to go with an entirely Brazilian team to the sake of this article.