In the first part of the story of professional CS:GO team MIBR, we went from their establishment to the dominant era and 2 Major victories. At that time, it looked like not a single team could stop them. What really happened to this team? Stay tuned to find out.
New Teams on the Front
The year 2017 was by far the most competitive year in the professional CS:GO scene. They were so many good teams it was almost impossible to predict who would win the Major.
The best team in 2016, Astralis, started to shine and seemed unstoppable. On the other side, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev’s ESL ban expired and Na’Vi also became the team to fear in 2017. Further, the team of superstars FaZe was also created in that year, not to mention Fnatic and G2 – teams that are always dangerous.
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SK had a long list of new competitors they couldn’t just take for granted. The year actually started pretty well for SK Gaming with the 3-4th place at the Atlanta Major. After losing against Virtus.pro in the semi-finals, they won two consecutive tournaments – cs_summit 1 and IEM Sydney.
SK were still in great shape and also won second place at ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals and three more consecutive first places prior to the Major. They were in perfect form but the Major in Krakow didn’t go exactly as they planned – Astralis stopped them in the quarter-finals and their journey was over.
Despite not winning a single Major, SK were still crowned the best team of 2017 and their era wasn’t over yet.
The End of the SK Gaming Era – 2018
As we all know, Astralis started to dominate the professional CS:GO scene in 2018 and not even SK could stop them. Although they finished 2017 with two first places on Tier-1 tournaments, they couldn’t get a single one in 2018. It all started at the Boston Major. SK were still good and they were one of the favorites to win it. However, Cloud9 stopped them in the semifinals and later went on to win that tournament. Two months later, Cloud9 and Jacky "Stewie2K" Yip stopped them again on Intel Extreme Masters XII.
Stewie2K was SK's kryptonite and they couldn’t do anything about it. The Brazilians were losing one match after another and decided that it was time for a change. Epitácio "TACO" de Melo was statistically the weakest link in the chain and he had to go. SK's logic was that you can’t defeat him, sign him – so they sent an offer to Stewie2K and he accepted it.
The Establishment of MIBR
All of a sudden, the Brazilian roster once again felt a need to change the organization. This time, they all decided to leave SK altogether and go to play for MIBR which stands for Made in Brazil. Ironically, this was the first time in the history of the team that all players weren’t from Brazil as they had Stewie2K in their roster.
On June, 23 2018, MIBR announced their new roster composed of the former SK Gaming players. The change of organization didn’t do any good. They still performed really badly. The whole year was a complete disaster and they once again decided to replace the person who was statistically the poorest player. This time it was Ricardo "boltz" Prass and he was replaced with Tarik "tarik" Celik, another Cloud9 member.
With the SK and Cloud9 mix, results didn’t improve at all and it was time for yet another roster change. Janko “YNk” Paunovic, a CS:GO analytic who decided to become a coach signed for MIBR and he immediately became head coach. However, he just wasn’t experienced enough and couldn't repair the damage in the team.
The best result MIBR had in 2018 was a second place at Esports Championship Series Season 6 but they still managed to end the season at 4th place which is not so bad if we consider all the facts.
Back to a Full-Brazilin Squad
Chemistry is one of the most important things in every CS:GO team. It is not enough to have 5 highly skilled individuals. Team communication is crucial and it needs to be fast and clear. Truth to be told, you can’t communicate in English like you can in your mother's tongue.
Finally, on December 21, the North American experiment with Stewie2K and tarik ended and MIBR decided to go back to their roots, to a full 5+1 Brazilian team. The org realized it was impossible to play without a support player so they traded Stewie2K with Liquid and got TACO back. That deal also included Wilton "zews" Prado and he joined as a new head coach.
But... it turned out that communication wasn’t the problem plaguing MIBR and it was a disaster once again. Bad results followed so they made another roster change. This time, João "felps" Vasconcellos was statistically the worst player and he had to go. He was loaned back to LG and MIBR brought young Brazilian riffler Lucas "LUCAS1" Teles as a replacement.
On top of that, they also tried to follow in Astralis' steps and even hired a team psychologist to help them overcome any non-technical obstacles and perform better both physically and mentally.
Coldzera parts ways with MIBR
MIBR's best player Marcelo "coldzera" David saw no future in MIBR anymore so he decided to step down. He didn’t want to play anymore so he was benched at his own request.
Although it seemed out of the blue, we could have guessed. Coldzera became a good friend with Nikola "NiKo" Kovač from FaZe and he even visited him a few times in Belgrade.
- READ MORE: The life and times of NiKo – Part 1
NiKo wanted coldzera in the team and it was only a matter of time for the transfer to occur. On September 26 2019, coldzera officially left the team and went to play for Faze Clan.
It’s cold without “cold”
Ever since coldzera left, problems have just been piling up for MIBR. They still haven't won a single tournament without him. The team tried to replace him and acquired Vito "kNgV-" Giuseppe from INTZ eSports. He is a good player but he just can’t replace coldzera. There are only a few players of his caliber currently alive and none of them is open for transfer, and definitely none of them are Brazilians. MIBR will never find someone like coldzera and it is almost certain that they will never again be so dominant like they were in 2017.
Today, MIBR is struggling as a team but they are slowly getting back into form. They even won one online tournament in 2020 and got the second place on two big tournaments: Flashpoint Season 1 and Blast Premier: Spring 2020 American Finals.
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