Monte advanced to the group stage of IEM Cologne 2023

The Ukrainian club Monte secured a place in the next stage of IEM Cologne by defeating FURIA in the upper bracket of the Play-In. The team led by Victor "sdy" Orudzhev overcame the Brazilian opponents with a score of 2:0 - Mirage 16:13, Overpass 5:16, Ancient 16:7.

Despite FURIA's defeat, Yuri "yuurih" Santos rightfully earned the MVP title of this bo3 series. The Brazilian became the leader not only in frags (57), but also in won duels (13), and average damage (91 HP).

After the victory, Monte player Sergey "DemQQ" Demchenko answered several questions during the English-language broadcast, touching upon the integration of newcomer Alexander "br0" Breaux.

[DemQQ on br0 integration].
I was curious because I wasn't sure if he would be comfortable or not. Sometimes he's a little nervous, but when I played at my first major, I felt the same way. I like the fact that he's already used to it, he feels very confident on the map, makes clutches. He clutched on Overpass and won another important clutch on Mirage with 1HP. I like that he likes our team atmosphere, we understand him and he understands us.
[About preparations for FURIA compared to the previous face-to-face meeting]
Many of the teams that play in the Play-In changed their roster, and in fact, they didn't play many official games, so we didn't prepare anti-strategies for a bunch of teams. We just played what we practiced at the bootcamp and that`s all, nothing more.

- Sergiy "DemQQ" Demchenko

The main highlight of the match was a 1v3 clash between the Dane and Monte from Five-Seven against the machines at Overpass.

Upper Bracket

READ MORE: BIG and Grayhound left IEM Cologne 2023

In a parallel confrontation, OG defeated Complexity in the lower bracket of the Play-In, knocking them out of the title race. The score was 16:11 on Mirage and 16:12 on Overpass in favor of the European team.

The best player was the sniper of the losing team, Håkon "hallzerk" Fjarli, whose rating was 6.7.

Lower Bracket

IEM Cologne 2023 takes place from July 26 to August 6. Teams are competing for a million-dollar prize pool and a slot at IEM Katowice 2024. You can follow the tournament schedule and results here.