During a VOD review stream on Wednesday, Oct. 25 of the recent Moist x Shopify vs. Sentinels show match, VCT caster Sideshow fired back at someone in his chat who was disparaging Sentinels’ Brazilian players.
“The Brazilians have ruined my SENS,” a user wrote in Sideshow’s Twitch chat during the VOD review during a section where Bryan “pANcada” Vinicius Luna da Silva was playing poorly.
Sideshow read this comment out loud on stream and immediately responded with justified outrage.
“Your SEN was dogshit, even before the Brazilian players joined,” Sideshow said while looking pained and exasperated. “Don’t try to tell me that ‘your SEN’ was a top team before the Brazilians joined.”
Statistically, it’s no secret that Sideshow is correct here. Sentinels haven’t had a significant tier-one or tier-two tournament win since 2021. Back then, they looked like the team to beat, taking home the Masters Reykjavík trophy and continuing to see success in the North American Challengers circuit.
But in the two seasons after this good run, Sentinels have slumped significantly, and Sideshow is again correct that this slump began before the Brazilian players—two former LOUD members—joined the squad for the 2023 season.
Sentinels fell into the fifth-to-eighth placement for Masters Berlin at the end of 2021, then failed to make playoffs during Champions of that year. Their 2022 season was mostly a quiet one filled with roster shifts, and they saw no tier-one success.
The Brazilian players, on the other hand, took second place at Masters Reykjavík 2022 and went on to win that year’s Champions with their former LOUD teammates. PANcada finished out the tournament as one of its top-eight players with a rating of 1.15 across 17 maps.
He and teammate Gustavo “Sacy” Rossi joined Sentinels in October 2022 after their big Champs win, and many thought this would be the breath of life the North American team desperately needed. Instead, as Sideshow pointed out, it seems like the team has dragged its Brazilian stars down with it over the past year.
“My Brazilians got ruined by your Sentinels,” Sideshow continued on stream. “These guys won a world championship, motherfucker, and now pANcada’s playing like this! What the hell did you do to them?!”
Since joining Sentinels, pANcada and Sacy haven’t seen anywhere near the level of their former success on LOUD. Fnatic knocked them out of LOCK//IN at the start of the year, and they ultimately didn’t qualify for Masters Tokyo.
The Sentinels roster has shifted again ahead of the 2024 season, with former OpTic Gaming player Marved and new in-game leader and former M80 star Mouhamed “johnqt” Ouarid joining in March and September, respectively. Maybe this new blood will be the shakeup needed to return the former world champions to winning form, though that wasn’t the case for the recent show match against Moist x Shopify.
