The location: a sold out𒁃 Daiwa Premist Dome, Sapporo, Japan. The event: The ALGS Championship, the biggest Apex Legends ALGS tournament to date. The winner: GoNext.
Coming from England, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:ALGS Championship in Sapporo is a very different beast to esports tournaments I’m used to. The crowd is polite, offering gentle applause when a team gets a kill. There are few chants, and none of them lewd. But this is a community that clearly, passionately loves 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends – it just does so in its own way.
There was a new energy come Championship Sunday. Not a raucous one, but a sense of anticipation. Of expectation. After four days of intense action, everything rests on today. After such an intensꦡe week of tournament play, after such an incredible event that has showcased the heart and soul of the Apex Legends fanbase, the final day had to live up to the hype. And after nine matches, it did: GoNext was crowned Champion.
TheGamer caught up with IGL Filipe ‘Hiarka’ Morgado after the match to break down their win and see how they’re feeling after clutching victory at the biggest ALGS tournament to d🔯ate.
"I always believed."
“It still feels unreal,” Hiarka tells me jusꦉt minutes after lifting the ALGS Championship trophy. “It’s like I’m in a simulation.” His phone is blowing up with messages to the point where Twitter is crashing. He caไn’t stop staring at the medal hung around his neck.
“It means everything,” ꦇhe continues. “This is what everဣy player wants at least once in their life. And for me, it means even more because firstly it’s in Japan, and secondly it’s a Championship. It’s not a Playoff, it’s the biggest tournament of the year, it’s the best 40 teams in the world. It means everything.”
Nobody would have predicted this result. GoNext are good, old-fashioned underdogs. In a lobby with names like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Phillip ‘ImperialHal’ Dosen on superteam Falcons, battling against Esports World Cup winners Alliance, and going head to head with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:home favourites Fnatic, GoNext are relative nobodies. While Hiarka and Jose ‘Uxacko’ Llosa have been on the competitive Apex sc꧑ene for years, their win this weekend took everyone by surprise.
“I wasn’t expecting [to win],” H🌃iarka tells me, “But I always believed. I don’t fear anyone in the game. We have the capabilities – we had the luck as well, it’s Apex, it’s a battle royale – but we had the right comms, the right luck, and we won.”
But it wasn’t smooth sailing. GoNext has had a successful, if understated, tournament, reaching the final t🦩hrough the winner’s bracket of the round robin competition. But today, GoNext was languishing in 14th place after four matches, putting just 17 points on the board as Complexity was approaching Match Point.
“I was feeling very tilted,” the Portuguese player explains. “Because we were losing on ourselves, we weren’t unlucky or anything. I’m thankfu🌟l we have the coach [...] He just calmed me down, saying ‘we can win, we can win’ and then the boys were slowly coming back up and after that win on e-District, we were like, ‘nah, we’re winning’.”
That win took GoNext onto Match Point. Just two matches later, they secured🦂 another win, this time on Storm Point, to claim the trophy. But what now? Where does GoNext go next?
“As a team [we’re not going to] change. We’re not perfect, we need to fix some stuff, but we won’t change. It just chꩲanges hౠow people look at us, and how much they respect us now.”
Hiarka says he’s had a wonderful time in Japan – although I imagine the events of the past few hours would make any 🍸situation feel great. He was struck by how polite the people are and the passion of the fans in Sapporo. You can see the giddiness in his face as he recalls the fans cheering for his team when they won, despite the fact that GoNext were such underdogs with few dedicated supporters.
GoNext has et🦄ched itself into the ALGS history books, achieved greatness only a handful of other teams have ever tasted. But there’s one thing that Hiarka is taking home to Portugal on hi🐽s 5am flight tomorrow morning – as well as his winner’s medal, of course.
“If you believe in yourself, it’s enough🐎. It doesn’t matter what ☂others think.”
📖Apex Legends Creates “Gigantic LAN Party” 480-Player Tournament For ALGꦅS Year 5
Apex Legends introducesꦫ Legend bans, a new map, and it﷽s biggest LAN yet in ALGS Year 5.
