R8 Esports punches their ticket to the Rocket League World Championship!

We’re now a fourth of the way through the RLCS Last Chance Qualifier weekend, and one team has booked their spot in the RLCS World Championship Play-In at Dickie’s Arena.

Here’s all of the action you missed from the Middle East and North Africa’s final five matches on Thursday.

DOS vs. Qlean

The Qlean boys were one of the three remaining teams in the MENA LCQ. Willie, Rez, and FBi are all relatively new to the MENA upper echelon, and looked to make a name for themselves today and claim MENA’s third LAN spot.

They clashed against DrKnown, Ops, and Suspect, two-thirds of the MENA LCQ runner-ups last season.

While Qlean jumped up to a quick and dominant 3-1 series lead, DOS managed to eke out the next two to force Qlean to take a timeout.

The extra minute did nothing to stop the momentum and DOS outlasted Qlean 1-0 on Champions Field to complete the LeBron comeback of a 1-3 series deficit.

NMT vs. Seirin

NMT, a squad consisting of Nadr, T7LM, and M7sn were probably the third favorites coming into the weekend, with 3 veteran players that have been near the top of the region for quite some time now.

And it seemed like their experience was no match for B2sel, Hatem, and iSL6Nii, as NMT jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead.

Seirin were able to steal the next game after their timeout in overtime, however, and went on to tie up the series. NMT see-sawed back into the lead with a shutout on Parc de Paris, but Seirin brought it back to even and forced NMT to take a timeout ahead of game 7.

Once again, the vets responded in kind with two quick goals to start off the final game of the series. With the clock ticking down, Hatem managed to cut the lead in half with a beautiful flip reset catch.

Seirin weren’t able to muster anything in the last two minutes, however, and their season came to a crushing end.

Stallions vs. DOS

Heading back to the semifinals, DOS now had a new foe in the second-seeded Stallions. The Stallions contained the other third of the runner-up LCQ squad from last season, Nush, and with him came Twiz and Trook.

DOS managed to strike first on the Stallions defense, but the guys in orange managed to catch them down the final stretch of game 1 and take a 1-0 series lead.

Stallions doubled it in the next game with a 4-2 win on Forbidden Temple. DOS immediately called their timeout and huddled up, trying to figure out a way to keep their season alive.

We have no idea what LTXSam ended up saying during that extra minute but whatever they did, it worked.

DOS took four consecutive one-goal games and came back from 0-2 down to win the series.

Every team that had played today and faced a deficit of two games or more had come back to win.

The two seed was out, and DrKnown and Ops had a chance at redemption.

R8 Esports vs. NMT

After sitting on the sidelines for over three hours, the big dawgs were coming to play. R8 Esports, the clear overall favorite of the MENA LCQ, took to the Mannfield pitch to finish their journey back to another RLCS LAN.

Abdullah, Ghaazi, and M7md had shocked the Rocket League world and replaced Team Falcons as one of the MENA representatives at the Paris Major.

Abdullah and Ghaazi were also two-thirds of the winning roster from last season’s LCQ. The duo had taken down Al Qadsiah under the ROC Esports banner, alongside Twiz instead of his now replacement M7md.

There was clearly a little bit of rust from the two week break, as NMT shutout the boys in blue in game one, 2-0. R8 fought back in games 2 and 3, however, taking two straight overtime wins to take the series lead.

In game 4, NMT scored right off the bat, but the goal was disallowed due to a lag spike that threw off the defense of one of the players. The deadlock carried into overtime, where NMT would score anyway to claim the win.

From there though, R8 stepped on the gas pedal. A more appropriate way of putting it is that they absolutely floored the thing. Right through the car and onto the pavement. A 4-0 shutout on Parc de Paris, and then a 2-0 shutout on Neo Tokyo.

The salt in the wound for NMT is that they actually opened the scoring in game 6 before having that one taken off the board as well. Off the kickoff following the pause, R8 immediately scored off a set piece and took the momentum to the house and to the Grand Finals.

R8 Esports vs. DOS

Now I would be remissed if I didn’t say that the dramatic set-up did a heck of a lot more for how cool this series was then the series itself.

Here we had two squads, with four players that had clashed in the previous LCQ one year ago, rematching for a spot at Worlds. One half had seen two LANs since then. The other, nothing. Some might say that the lack of LAN appearances would make that one team hungrier, and boy did it seem that way in the semis.

Abdullah and Ghaazi did not care one bit. 4-0. Good morning, good afternoon, and goodnight.

R8 Esports have their Play-In matchup over in Fort Worth set as well, as they’ll take on Sphinx and TSM to open up their World Championship run.

If they win that, they more than likely have a date with their old friends, or sons if I may be so bold, in Team Falcons.

Abdullah and Ghaazi are now the first players to win back-to-back LCQ spots, a statistic that can only be matched by Radosin, Brad, and Droppz now.

M7md has his own share of history in this win, as he’ll be the first player from Kuwait to compete at the Rocket League World Championship.

Congratulations again to R8 Esports, we’ll see you in Fort Worth!