Porto bracket set: Spirit and MOUZ wait in the semis as the Kovač brothers meet in the quarters
The BLAST Open Porto group stage has wrapped up at BLAST's Copenhagen studios, and only six teams of the original sixteen travel to the Super Bock Arena – Pavilhão Rosa Mota for the playoffs from September 4 to 6.
And two of them arrive with a considerable advantage.
Spirit and MOUZ, straight to the semi-finals
Spirit and MOUZ won their respective groups and skip the quarter-finals entirely. The Russians beat FURIA in their group's upper bracket final, while the Germans did the same to Falcons.
It's a substantial prize: in a single-elimination bracket, skipping a series means arriving fresher and, above all, having a top-four finish locked in before playing a single map in Portugal.
For Spirit it confirms their purple patch. They arrive off winning the Esports World Cup in Paris just over a week ago, with donk as MVP, stringing together two top-tier tournaments at their best. For MOUZ, winning their group ahead of the Major champions reinforces the sense that their rebuild with PR is serious business — remember they already took BLAST Bounty in Malta.
Vitality and G2 survive through the lower bracket
The other two spots went to Vitality and G2, both the hard way, recovering through the lower bracket after earlier stumbles.
Vitality's case carries added context. The French arrived in Copenhagen amid an ongoing debate about the end of their era, after a quarter-final exit at the Esports World Cup to Spirit and an uneven summer. And they arrived with jL as a stand-in, covering mezii's paternity leave. Getting through by the long route, with a new player in the lineup, is no bad sign. apEX, in fact, sounded optimistic after one of the matches, saying that when they play like that he sees them as a very dangerous team.
The quarters: two ties with history
Friday the 4th opens the playoffs with two matchups that need no introduction.
Falcons against G2 (16:00 CEST) is, beyond a direct rematch of their meeting in Stage 3 of the Cologne Major, the duel between the Kovač brothers: Nikola "NiKo" at Falcons and Nemanja "huNter-" at G2. One of them is leaving Porto early.
FURIA against Vitality (19:30 CEST) is the first meeting between the two since IEM Rio, where the French took the title. FURIA arrive bruised after losing their group to Spirit, but with KSCERATO in fine form and the added weight of FalleN's final season.
Saturday the 5th brings the semi-finals, with Spirit and MOUZ waiting for the winners. And Sunday the 6th, the best-of-five grand final.
Those left behind
The cut has been severe, leaving significant names by the wayside. NAVI, Aurora, Legacy, FUT, Lynn Vision, DENDELE, M80, Inner Circle, and paiN all failed to make the trip to Portugal.
Two sting in particular. Legacy and FUT, the Esports World Cup's two great revelations — third and runners-up respectively in Paris — couldn't repeat barely two weeks later. And Aurora add another disappointment to kyxsan's international project, still without the result that would justify the summer's revolution.
What's at stake
The champion takes $150,000 in player prize money plus a $100,000 club share, from a combined pool of $1,100,000.
But what really carries weight in this stretch of the season are the VRS points heading toward November's Singapore Major. With the calendar this compressed — FISSURE Playground 3 in Suzhou begins on September 8, two days after the final — every tournament counts twice over: for what it hands out, and for the toll it takes.
Source: HLTV, Liquipedia, BLAST.