rafifa13 tops LucasRep98 to win FUT 17 Miami Regional Final

Much like the Rest of World Season One grand final, two fellow countrymen faced off in Miami for 30,000 dollars and a chance to stake their claim as the best FIFA player from the Americas.

The Xbox One champion Rafael Fortes, better known as ‘rafifa13,’ won his group with seven points and made his way to the final with relative ease, outscoring his opponents, 12-3. Per EA, The Rio native is a two-time Brazilian FIFA champion, and has been a fixture on the competitive gaming scene for five years. Lucas Costa, the Brazilian PS4 champion, finished second in his group to Olimaclan but ended up with the last laugh as he beat him twice in the knockout stages to win the division and advance to the final.

In a back-and-forth first leg on the PS4, rafifa13, playing on his non-native console, took the lead twice, only to be pegged back immediately by LucasRep98. The game ended 2-2, but the XB1 champion felt very much on top thanks to the away-goals rule.

rafifa13 took the lead again on the Xbox leg to make 1-0 and 3-2 on aggregate, and Lucas’ couldn’t muster a comeback as a red card and penalty about halfway through spelled the end for the PS4 champ’s Miami campaign.

The final ended 5-3 on aggregate, with the Xbox One winning it all for the third weekend in a row.

Unlike the Paris and Sydney regionals, three players from Xbox One and PS4 advance to Berlin in May. Here’s how the groups and knockout stages finished up:

Group Standings

Knockout Stage

Both console grand finals featured the same two players from the previous match in the winner’s bracket, with Olimaclan and Janoz CFI dropping down to the consolation bracket only to jump straight back up. However, the initial results stood in both instances.

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The day started with Fifabeast43 being disqualified in Group 1 in the Xbox One play. All his opponents received three points right off the bat and only had to play two matches instead of three as a result.

A lot of drama with Fifabeast43's disqualification, which was apparently related to him being underaged:

An apology was tweeted out from Fifabeast43’s account later on.

Aman Sedd, who signed with AS Roma's new first ever eSports team this past week, got off to a slow start, then started cooking with gas. It was nil-nil at half time before he exploded out to a 4-0 win. He apparently talked some real life trash after his first goal then was seemingly unstoppable for the rest of the match. He'd go on to win his second as well.

He celebrates vociferously in real life after almost every goal:

"The dab is almost like a reflex. Get in the head of the other players a little bit," he told Chu "Chuboi" Morah after dabbing on his opponent with George Best after his fourth goal of the match.

"Well, I started the match quite slow but winning the match 2-0 I changed the formation to 4-1-2-1-2 narrow and pushed on him and came back," Didychrislito said about his draw. After winning his first match and drawing the second, he just needed a point to advance to the Knockout Round.

"The biggest change I made is the mentality of the team." Rafifa13 told Jimmy Conrad after outlasting Aman Sedd in arguably the match of the day through the first half of the group stage, 4-2. "It's good to be at the top of the tournament."

YouTuber AA9Skillz made history, becoming the first YouTuber to make a FUT regional final. His first match was a task too tall, falling to Kid M3mito, 5-2. M3mito leveraged TOTY Messi, who for the second straight week was the most impressive player on the pitch.

This concludes Season One of the FUT Championship Series. A total of 16 players have qualified so far for the Berlin championships (eight from Europe, two from Rest of World, and six from the Americas) which will be held between May 19-21.

Season Two will resume on April 8 with another round of competitors from the Americas, and will be held in Vancouver. The series will then move to Singapore on April 22 for the Rest of World competitors, and conclude with the European challengers on May 6 before the grand finals.