LOUD LOUD Brazil Unranked Quick Gabriel Lima saadhak Matias Delipetro Less Felipe de Loyola tuyz Arthur Andrade cauanzin Cauan Pereira advance to Masters Madrid playoffs after a 2-0 against EDward Gaming EDward Gaming China Unranked ZmjjKK Zheng Yongkang (郑永康) nobody Wang Senxu (王森旭) Muggle Tang Shijun (唐时俊) CHICHOO Wan Shunji (万顺治) Smoggy Zhang Zhao (张钊) Haodong Guo Haodong (郭浩东) . With only five round wins across the match, the loss is not only EDward Gaming's worst performance at an international event, but also their worst result since being formed.

EDG are now eliminated from the tournament and are the second Chinese team LOUD have sent home. Now in the top four, LOUD will next play on March 21 and maintain an opportunity to become the second team to win two international VCT events.

Icebox, EDG's map pick, kicked off the series. “When we saw they picked Icebox, we thought, ‘that's great',” saadhak said after the match. LOUD easily won their attacking pistol round, followed by a patient anti-eco win. EDG answered with a bonus win as expected, but the rest of the map was far from standard. Another two rounds followed for the Brazilian squad, forcing a timeout from their opponents.

The pause did not pay off, as two rounds later AfteR saw the need to call their second timeout. LOUD's offense was suffocating, expertly taking advantage of weak anchoring and indecisive rotations to punish their opponents. Although they were reduced to one or two players across many rounds, their deaths were mostly consolation kills for EDG.

saadhak barely breaks a sweat as he pushes aggressively

By the end of the map, LOUD's confidence, and their rival's lack thereof, was clear. The way they were able to set up Quick 's Jett was significant, as he ended the first half with 14 eliminations and 4-1 in first-kills to first-deaths, compared to ZmjjKK 's 2 kills and 3 first-deaths.

The second half was a formality. EDG won the pistol round but lost the next two rounds to an eco and 1v2 from tuyz . With that, Icebox ended 13-2 in favor of LOUD, who were now one map away from making playoffs.

LOUD opted for Sunset as the second map of the series. EDward Gaming appeared to be back in form to start, an eco win helping them reach 2-1 after losing the pistol. The advantage was short-lived, however. LOUD were happy to allow the attackers to plant; a complete denial of their opponent's lurk left them free to set up retakes without issue.

LOUD punished EDG's direct site pushes and lurks throughout the half

It wasn't until the last round of the half that EDG found any success, punishing LOUD's early ultimates and mid push. The half ended 9-3, but the gap proved too large to overcome. LOUD took the second pistol round, and questionable economy management from EDG left them with essentially a half buy for round 3. They secured a 4v2, but LOUD were still able to win the round. The top China seed used their second timeout to no avail and the map ended 13-3.

In-game leader saadhak commented on Quick's addition and his performance during the series. “I'm very proud of him,” saadhak said. “He only slept for two hours, he went to the hospital, but we told him to do his best,” he added. “Even at his worst, he is really good. I'm proud.”