Brazilian Paradox - the worst in the standings, but the best in statistics

Based on the results of yesterday's game day, we learned the name of the first team to leave the competition. This difficult fate fell to the players from FURIA. It happened because the esportsmen performed poorly and their individual form is bad, right? Or not? Let's take a look at this issue!

To begin with, we will tell you the background about the beginning of the difficult path of the Brazilian team within the BLAST Premier Global Final 2020.On January 8, Enrique 'HEN1' Teles left the ranks of FURIA in order to reunite with his brother Lucas 'LUCAS1' Teles, with whom he, by the way, became a silver medalist at PGL Krakow Major 2017. And Enrique was a sniper in the team, and therefore his loss was very significant. The management could not detain the esports player, since they had known for a long time about his desire to start playing with his brother again and treated this request with all respect (at least the owner of FURIA submitted the information in this way). The only question is why Enrique didn’t want to wait for the completion of BLAST Premier Global Final 2020 and not raise some prize money there? We can only speculate about this.

After HEN1 left, the management began to look for e-sportsmen who could replace the departed player both in the starting lineup and directly in BLAST Premier Global Final 2020. First, FURIA signed a contract with American Junior, who, as it turned out later, could not travel to Serbia for a bootcamp... The management started looking for a replacement again and found honda, a Brazilian player, who could travel with his teammates to the training site and compete there in the online championship.

From this whole story, it follows that the players simply did not have time to play with each other to the right extent, and based on how the Brazilians performed, the skills of the new sniper were not enough for the team to succeed in at least one from played matches. Two cards won is better than zero, but, nevertheless, as a result, the Brazilians took 7-8 place in the standings.

Why did we call FURIA a Brazilian paradox at this tournament? Everything is very simple. The players left the championship as the very first, but in the HLTV rating, according to the intermediate results, they are the best in all respects, whether it is the amount of damage dealt in a round, how many kills were committed in a round, the percentage of headshots or how many 1vsX clutches were taken. By the way, in the last two articles, team newcomer Lucas 'honda' Honda showed himself best of all, which means he is not as bad as it might seem at first glance. However, it is better to see statistics once than to hear about it 100 times.

If all the players on the Brazilian team play so well, then why did they fail? Here the question can be posed somewhat differently: if they were defeated, then why do they have the highest rate? We see several answers here. The team opposed not the strongest participants in the current competition in our opinion, and therefore it is much easier to get good statistics in this case than if the team played, for example, against Astralis or Team Vitality. For this reason, dragging a clutch or killing a less cautious opponent is much easier. Practice has shown that strength is not in individual skills, but in unity and team play.

This hypothesis was confirmed yesterday by ZywOo together with s1mple. The latter ended up in second position, while his French opponent topped the list of twenty best players of the past year. Alexander 's1mple' Kostylev said on his Twitter account that in order to achieve top 1 status, it is much more important to perform in synergy with your team, and not only show incredible individual skills. Do not forget that FURIA played in six maps as part of the current tournament, which so far only Evil Geniuses have managed to achieve. For these 6 cards played, they had more opportunity to reveal themselves individually and this is another reason why FURIA's statistics are better than their opponents. This statement will become even more convincing if you pay attention to the fact that either Evil Geniuses or FURIA Esports themselves are positioned in all ratings.

Returning to the main question that we asked at the very beginning: did the esportsmen perform poorly because their individual form is bad? No. The Brazilians left the competition because their individual form, although it can be called good, but the team chemistry, to put it mildly, leaves much to be desired. In addition, the departure of the sniper in the person of HEN1 created difficulties for which the players did not have time to prepare. And sometimes, things just happen. Natus Vincere, for example, could not beat the roster, which was also assembled a few days before the start of the championship.