Lionel Messi’s Co-Owned VALORANT team, KRU Esports, has retained their unbeaten record. They are the only team in the world of VCT that has remained unbeaten going into week 5 of VCT, with VCT China still awaiting their Week 4 of games.
KRU Esports went 0-9 in their regular season last year in VCT with their only highlights coming in their Last Chance Qualifier and eventually making it to VCT Champions. They seem to be the opposite of last years peformance after going 4-0 in regular season matches taking down LOUD in their superweek. The LATAM side have now made the Brazilian Giants go to 0-3.
Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg
The introduction of heat into the KRU side has put them onto the right track with their Kick-Off performance not up to scratch. However, they were without heat, after their poor performance in kick-off, they added the ex-MIBR player heat into their roster and have been on fire since.
Last year, heat was the duelist player for MIBR and now on KRU he has become the initiator player and seems to be thriving alongside his teammate, keznit who is still one of the top duelists in VCT Americas.
Similar to TenZ, ZmjjKK and Sayf, the duelist players from 2023 have now moved onto a more flexible role and moved off of duelist to allow other players to take up that role and take their team to another level.
KRU are now set to play their 2 remaining games against 100Thieves and Leviatan, where they are expected to make playoffs anyway, they are looking towards a 6-0 record for their split looking towards Masters Shanghai.
— KRU TRADUCTOR DE KEZNIT PA LAS PENAS KLAS (@TraductorDeus) April 25, 2024
Lionel Messi, who became co-owners of KRU alongside Sergio Aguero, late last year, posted for their win on Instagram after they retained their unbeaten record and now their fanbase is growing even more with the addition of two SUPERSTAR footballers.
The ‘Super Team’ of VCT Americas, NRG, got humbled against Leviatan, after hyping up the team and their chances of winning it all, NRG are looking below par of what they are used to indivdually. Demon1 no longer is showing the firepower that he had last year on Evil Geniuses despite now being the centre of attention on the squad.
Leviatan, a super team in their own right, absolutely dominated NRG last night with NRG only allowed to take 8 rounds from 2 maps, an even more impressive and overwhelming victory than Sentinels against MIBR on Saturday. NRG having only played teams that you could call ‘not contenders’ and when they play world class teams they seem to crumble against Sentinels and now Leviatan.
Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg
NRG really had a shocking performance against the LATAM giants who just came off the back of a 2-0 win over Sentinels aswell.
Demon1, who was the MVP of VCT Champions 2023, dropped 13 kills across the two maps instead of dominating like he did last year. aspas, who has been called the GOAT of Valorant, dropped 34 kills and looked unbothered that he was striking down the MVP of Champions 2023.
NRG have started to create a reputation for themselves for being toxic and super confident in themselves despite not having the results to back it up. Victor, before the game said that it was going to be easy, and it ended up being somewhat the opposite and it seemed that Leviatan took control of map control, rotations and even NRG’s aim seemed off during the matchup.
Before the matchup, Demon1, said in an interview that
”I will take care of aspas”
Those words came back to bite him as the ended the match with 2 first kills and 15 first deaths across the two maps.
NRG now look ahead to their next game against MIBR which should be an easy game, and Leviatan look ahead to G2 Esports which seems straight forward after the results they got against Sentinels and NRG over the past 2 weeks.
Sentinels kick-off the VCT Americas Superweek with a well furnished 2-0 victory over MIBR with Zekken taking the MVP of the series grabbing himself 40 kills across the two maps.
It was just smooth sailing for the Masters Madrid winners only allowing the Brazilian side to get 10 rounds across the two maps with Lotus going 13-3 in favour of Sentinels and then Bind going 13-7 the way of Sentinels with a 9-3 first half.
Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg
Coming off of a loss against Leviatan, where aspas dropped 68 kills across the two maps, Sentinels needed to get back to Championship form which they proved that they will and did against this poor MIBR side. Their new Bind comp switching TenZ off of Yoru and onto the Gekko has proved to be something that has worked incredibly in their favour with Zekkens, Raze being one of the best in the world, that alone is enough firepower to send Sentinels ahead of the competition.
Sentinels now look ahead to Evil Geniuses on Tuesday where they will hope to go 3-1 in games in the regular season and make it to the playoffs from the alpha group despite KRU going 3-0 at the moment.
Won against MIBR 2-0 GG’s to them, we are now 2-1 in the group. Might be getting back to my scope abusing days 😎
Sentinels did look slightly different in their playstyle in that TenZ picked up the Outlaw and the Operator much more often allowing him to take long range fights and win them out much more comfortably despite how good his rifling has been this season.
He recently said on stream –
”Other than aspas, America doesnt really have a good AWPer”
He then proceeds to pick up the AWP and take as many fights as he could with it, one being a clutch on Bind whilst AWPing on Gekko. First made popular by EDG’s ZMjjKK.
The Masters Madrid Champions return back to VCT Americas to play their first game of Split 1 against their long term rivals, 100 Thieves in a game that they took by storm and dominated showing despite their lack of practice, they are still on the top of VCT.
There were questions on whether or not their IGL, johnqt, could make it back from Morocco in time for the game as he, alongside the LOUD guys, was dealing with heavy visa issues stopping him from getting into the USA to play against 100 Thieves. However, he did make it and played very well despite only getting into the country 24 hours earlier. He dropped 30 frags across the two maps which left him 4th in the lobby.
After a start that looked like 100 Thieves were competitive and were looking to disrupt the flow of the reining champions, Sacy just shifted into a different gear with the Brazilian dropping 22 kills and a crucial 4k in the final round of the map to take Icebox 13-10 and set up for Split which they are known for being the best worldwide at.
They took Split comfortably 13-6 leaving 100T fans wondering why Zikz didnt ban Split from SEN’s hands since their final map, if 100T were to beat SEN on Split, wouldve been Sunset. Sunset is a map that is played so well by Sentinels that some fans call the map SENset because of their prowess on the map.
It has been 605 days since @100T_VAL has beaten @Sentinels. (August 11th, 2022 – NA LCQ 2022)
— VALORANT Esports NA (@valesports_na) April 7, 2024
Sentinels start off their year with confidence only losing 3 matches all year, 1 of them being a useless match against G2 in the lower brackets, and the other two against LOUD and GenG. They start off stage 1 looking confident ahead of their battle against Leviatan and Aspas who dropped 78 kills in a 3 map series against Cloud9.
100 Thieves, however, are off to a poor start with Boostio only dropping 10 kills across the two maps and some poor decisions individually from the players. They go on to face G2 who are looking strong with their new addition of Icy in their 2-0 victory over Evil Geniuses.
After bowing out of VCT Kick-off, NRG with their superteam had to come back and make a statement out of their first opponents of the VCT Americas stage 1. Their first opponent ended up being LOUD, their cores long term rivals with the OPTIC and NRG core facing off against LOUD for years.
However, they came into this years game with a different roster and outlook with their primary caller, FNS, being replaced by Ethan, and their fire power, yay, being replaced by the best player of 2023, Demon1. This roster got eliminated in Kick-off by the eventual Masters Madrid winners, Sentinels and were quite underwhelming despite the potential that this team has on paper.
— VALORANT Esports NA (@valesports_na) April 7, 2024
They came into the game with LOUD only getting days to practice after having several visa issues leaving all of their Brazilian players stuck in Ireland with Saadhak the only player in LA meaning that they definitely were not to their full potential as a roster and it showed with an abysmal showing on Sunset despite Less’ monster performance on Breeze.
There was also a debut of new comps for NRG with the new meta being Yoru/ Raze being used by teams across the world, they implemented this into their game and put Ethan on Yoru for Breeze and Demon1 debuted his Raze for the first time ever, topping the lobby in kills.
To become a top duelist this year, you HAVE to be able to play Raze at a high level shown by top duelists from Masters Madrid such as Zekken, t3xture and f0rsaken. Demon1 is still improving and despite his Raze utility not being up to the level of Zekken or Jinggg, his aim makes up for his lack of experience with him just clicking heads effortlessly.
Their next game is against FURIA on the 14th of April where they will look to become a 2-0 side in VCT Americas and show that they mean business this year.
After Cloud9 announced the departures of wippie and jakee, there were two spots left to fill on the roster. It has been decided that the return of Runi to the roster will be implemented and Moose will make his VCT debut for the NA side.
Runi, was dropped from the roster for the start of the 2024 VCT season due to unknown reasons, however it seems that it was short lived with himself returning to a completely different roster where it is assumed that he will not be IGL’ing the roster since Vanity remains despite being the IGL last year which got them to second place in VCT Americas.
In an X video (seen above), Cloud9 announce their roster for Split 1 of VCT Americas where they are hoping for similar success to last year with a different roster only having Xeppaa and Runi remain from their top 2 run.
There were rumours of pANcada joining the team or possibly Monyet, after both of the players have been moved to the bench on their respective superteams despite being very impressive technical players mechanically and vocally.
moose found himself on the short end of the stick in challengers NA last year after going out to G2 Esports and M80 who were the two finalists in the Ascension for VCT Americas this year. After this loss, he briefly moved to Turtle Troop, another Challengers team, before opting to join YFP Gaming. The newly-formed troupe of talent breezed through the open qualifiers and secured a spot at Challengers in 2024 before moose left the team for a spot in franchising with Cloud9.
Cloud9 is now:
Anthony “vanity” Malaspina (IGL)
Erick “Xeppaa” Bach (Flex)
Dylan “runi” Cade (Initiator)
Kaleb “moose” Jayne (Sentinel/ Smokes)
Francis “OXY” Hoang (Duelist)
Ian “Immi” Harding (Coach)
Guglielmo “GUGLi” Carraro (Assistant coach)
Cloud9’s new roster will debut against Latin American rivals Leviatán in Week 1 of the Stage 1 Americas League on April 6th streamed on YouTube and Twitch with watch parties coming from streamers such as Tarik, s0m and FNS.
Cloud9 have parted ways with Jake “jakee” Anderson ahead of VCT Americas Stage 1. This leaves only three players currently on the Cloud9 roster: Erick “Xeppaa” Bach, Francis “OXY” Hoang, and Anthony “vanity” Malaspina.
After coming in 2022 as the ‘yay’ replacement, fans werent expecting much from the rookie on his debut year of VCT however, he defied all expectations and odds and placed 2nd in the VCT Americas despite bombing out of the international qualifications.
Now that it's over, it feels like it was all a dream
After over a year on the roster, he has been dropped just a month after his teammate ‘wippie’ was dropped after their failure in the VCT Americas: Kick-Off event earlier this year.
There have been no names put up to replace these two stars in the roster however, there is speculation on reddit and other websites as to who will be joining the roster with some rumours pointing the way of low salaried players that aren’t looking for big paychecks.
If your hopes are up for s0m and FNS, the expectations for that would be ridiculously high as they arent planning for any big spending this year for their roster which was made clear when they put together their original roster for the upcoming season which has already expanded.
Today we part ways with the biggest bean who's showed up on the biggest stages
With the upcoming Masters Madrid only days away, now is a good time to look back at the VCT Kick-off tournaments across the world and what better than to start with Americas where Sentinels took the crown this year.
There were so many changes in this league with no teams staying the same over the off-season leading to the creation of 4 superteams and 3 of them were seeded into group B leaving 100Thieves in a sticky spot to make it out, getting double eliminated.
Looking at stats, the best players in the tournament were similar to what American fans are used to. In this top 5 list, only players that have played over 125 rounds will be counted into the rankings, and for players that have the same rating off of vlr.gg, it will be ranked off who has the more rounds played as keeping a higher rating with more rounds is more impressive.
5. LOUD tuyz
Being one of the only teams to make 1 change this year, LOUD went into kick-off losing their star player and main firepower in aspas which meant that their rankings have changed dramatically from last years ratings.
Despite this, they made it to Madrid by defeating aspas and his new team Leviatan, with tuyz being a crucial part of their success and at times became the backbone of their CT side on maps running the controller role.
He was brought into the team to replace the MVP of Champions 2022, pANcada, and he hasn’t disappointed despite not winning an international trophy since that, they have shown consistent performances and did win the VCT Americas last year in quite comfortable fashion whilst being the only team to defeat FNATIC at all last year.
4. SEN TenZ
As many are already aware, TenZ is the face of VALORANT and has been that since the start of VALORANT. His record high performance at Masters Reykjavik with his ACS still holds the top spot to this day however, his play style has changed from Reyna and Jett to now playing the Omen and KAY/0.
However, despite dropping down from the main entry role on the team, his stats are still through the roof on the Omen where he is seeming to reinvent how Omen is played with picking up the AWP and taking fights that he can afford to take with the Teleport ability that Omen has.
His performance was very important to Sentinels success in the last season of VCT with the crucial game against NRG where he dropped 30 kills on the Omen on Sunset and showed what his Omen can do on the AWP on the Split.
3. LEV aspas
This is the first of the same rating where the top three players all have a rating of 1.15 across this tournament however, aspas, is the lowest of the three since Leviatan wasnt able to make it out of the group of death and only played 186 rounds on the Raze, Jett and Reyna.
He left LOUD in 2023 and moved to Leviatan for this VCT season and he ended up being taken down by his former team and left for April for the normal VCT season where he can try and get his revenge against his former team in LOUD and his replacement qck.
This will be the first LAN tournament that aspas has missed since Berlin 2020 Champions where he wasn’t there since he was in Brazil Challengers fighting to make a name for himself which he has done by being named one of the GOATs of VALORANT in its short history.
2. LOUD Less
Once again, Less had a 1.15 rating also but he made it to the Grand Final of the Kick-Off tournament and therefore played 271 rounds and showed why he deserves the respect that other players show him.
He has been the core of LOUD’s success for many years now with playing the Sentinel role on the side and still putting up numbers for ACS and kills alongside the superstars in aspas and now qck.
It has been very impressive to see the Brazilian take over and show his technique and aim that is admired across the VALORANT world, with ex-CSGO pro, Tarik, saying that Less has ‘ the best aim in the world‘.
1. SEN Zekken
The number one spot goes to Zekken of Sentinels with a 1.15 rating but a HUGE 432 rounds nearly doubling the second place, Less’, rounds with a very impressive play-in run to face off against NRG and then make it to Masters Madrid with himself topping the server that has Demon1, TenZ and Marved in there.
Zekken’s Raze has been admired by the world as the best Raze in the world since the retirement of Jinggg has left room for a new best Raze in the world. Sentinels have found the key to their success and it is Zekken on the Raze instead of TenZ on the duelist.
Zekken also plays the Jett at a very high level despite TenZ taking up the AWP role with Zekken being a top 5 rifler in the world.
Coming into Masters Madrid, SEN are looking like favourites to make it very far and Zekken’s performance is very important to their success with his entries making space for the team more than TenZ did last season, allowing the players to flood on site and the aim and game sense from their team, can carry them to a possible 2nd Masters trophy.
An honorable mention, goes to mwzera of FURIA, who actually topped the tournament as of rating with a 1.19 rating but he did get double eliminated from the tournament after losing 2-0 to both NRG and MIBR with FURIA not taking a map from any team. This being the truth, it didn’t feel correct to put him at the top of the ratings with this side not taking anything from the tournament.
After 5 games Sentinels finally make it to the Play-offs for their spot at Masters Madrid after dominating the play-ins.
With a very easy and comfortable 2-0 over mibr, SEN only needed 1 map against long time rivals G2 Esports after they lost their game against mibr. All that was needed was 1 map in a 3 map matchup and they got it instantly winning the sunset 13-8 after being down 8-4 at the half.
Zekken and TenZ really showed up in these matches with both of them dropping over 70 kills across the 3 maps. TenZ, who has taken up the Omen role, has taken his own look on it AWP-ing and sometimes entry with the controller agent. Zekken is once again showing why he is a top 5 NA player with his ridiculous movement on Raze and his AWP-ing on Jett.
After dominating mibr 2-0, TenZ was full of confidence alongside the team as they were looking forward to a timeless classic matchup against G2 Esports with the newly re-vamped Sentinels roster, and johnqt transforming the team into something that is to be feared across the Americas league.
They cleared through the play-ins as expected and then once the draw was announced, fans were questioning the truth behind the ‘random’ draw that was done behind closed doors.
SEN could only play one of Evil Geniuses or NRG as they already lost to LOUD in groups. SEN fans were hoping for EG to be their matchup as NRG are looking hot fire this year with their new additions to the roster. However, all good comes to an end with SEN having to face off against this superteam in NRG on the 3rd of March 2023.
After a complete domination on Split with 13-3 to Sentinels, Leviatan clapped back with a 13-6 victory on Breeze leaving the deciding game up to Bind which is known as being aspas’ ‘playground‘ whilst also being one of SEN’s best maps with TenZ on Yoru.
Despite both of those players playing well it was the 18 year old Zekken that took over and dominated across the three maps dropping 57 frags and delivering the final blow to the LATAM side with a double kill with the ShowStopper to end the hopes of aspas going to another Masters event.
This win sends Sentinels into the play-ins where they will play a 3 way round robin against G2 and MIBR who came second in their respective groups. SEN are favourites however, to make it to the play offs to fight for a spot into Madrid but they do have to overcome the hurdle approaching them tonight.
The winner of the round robin will go into the play-offs to face either NRG, LOUD or Evil Geniuses.
#VCTAmericas Kickoff Play-In Round Robin takes place tomorrow
MIBR vs Sentinels MIBR vs G2 Esports Sentinels vs G2 Esports
The winner will join NRG, LOUD, and Evil Geniuses in the Americas Playoffs to determine what two teams qualify for VCT Masters Madrid pic.twitter.com/vrxH69sVMV
If Sentinels make it through the play-ins they cannot play LOUD due to bracket restrictions allowing for either them to play NRG or Evil Geniuses with SEN fans hoping for the latter choice as NRG are looking very dominant with their superteam ripping apart group A.
They play their games for the play-ins tonight at 8pm against MIBR and then at 2am against G2 Esports for a place in the play offs. The games will be streamed on Twitch and co-streamed by personalities such as Tarik, s0m and FNS.
Power Pitches 