Imperial invited to ESL Challenger Melbourne

The Brazilian squad will travel to Australia at the beginning of September.

ESL has announced the penultimate team invited to ESL Challenger Melbourne, inviting Imperial to participate in the $100,000 competition taking place from September 2-4 based on their ESL World Ranking.

The squad around Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo will be among the highest-ranked teams in attendance, at the time of the announcement being the second-highest only after OG, with Entropiq, ORDER, EG White, Wings Up, and VERTEX also set to attend after securing their spot in various qualifiers.

Imperial look to recover from a poor end of the season

With the off-season currently underway, rumors are swirling around the 'Last Dance' roster, linking them with the departure of their oldest member, Lincoln "⁠fnx⁠" Lau, following a string of early exits from events such as IEM Cologne and IEM Dallas.

Reports say their primary target is MIBR's Marcelo "⁠chelo⁠" Cespedes and that his teammate, Jhonatan "⁠JOTA⁠" Willian, as well as Rodrigo "⁠biguzera⁠" Bittencourt and Lucas "⁠Lucaozy⁠" Neves have also been considered. Should changes come to fruition, ESL Challenger Melbourne will be the team's debut with a new player.

Only one team is left to be revealed, coming from the ESL World Ranking as well:

ORDER
Wings Up
VERTEX
EG White Entropiq
OG
Imperial
ESL World Ranking Wings Up #71 Yi 'gas' DingLiu 'lan' QiXueBing 'B1NGO' DaiZhengjie 'Martin' ZhuoJunhao 'ChildKing' Peng Jhonatan 'JOTA' Willian Age: 24 Team: MIBR Rating 1.0: 1.08 Maps played: 430 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.64 Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes Age: 24 Team: MIBR Rating 1.0: 1.06 Maps played: 915 KPR: 0.72 DPR: 0.65 MIBR #26 Marcelo 'chelo' CespedesRaphael 'exit' LacerdaMatheus 'Tuurtle' AnhaiaJhonatan 'JOTA' WillianBreno 'brnz4n' Poletto Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo Age: 31 Team: Imperial Rating 1.0: 1.06 Maps played: 1581 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.60 VERTEX #72 Liam 'malta' SchembriToby 'BRACE' BarnesMatthew 'Valiance' HartrickDeclan 'Vexite' PortelliJordan 'pz' White EG White #56 Jonathan 'djay' DallalJonathan 'Jonji' CareyBen 'ben1337' SmithJosh 'PwnAlone' PigueWesley 'viz' Harris Lincoln 'fnx' Lau Age: 32 Team: Imperial Rating 1.0: 1.02 Maps played: 687 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.66 ORDER #48 Simon 'Sico' WilliamsJay 'Liazz' TregillgasAlistair 'aliStair' JohnstonJoshua 'INS' PotterJordan 'Hatz' Bajic OG #16 Nemanja 'nexa' IsakovićAdam 'NEOFRAG' ZouharShahar 'flameZ' ShushanAbdul 'degster' GasanovMaciej 'F1KU' Miklas Imperial #23 Lincoln 'fnx' LauGabriel 'FalleN' ToledoFernando 'fer' AlvarengaRicardo 'boltz' PrassVinicius 'VINI' Figueiredo Entropiq #34 Nikolay 'mir' BityukovAleksei 'NickelBack' TrofimovVladislav 'Krad' KravchenkoAleksei 'El1an' GusevIgor 'Forester' Bezotecheskiy Lucas 'Lucaozy' Neves Age: 20 Team: Sharks Rating 1.0: 1.03 Maps played: 399 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.65 Rodrigo 'biguzera' Bittencourt Age: 25 Team: paiN Rating 1.0: 1.09 Maps played: 622 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.63