Serral
| Serral | |
|---|---|
| Current team | |
| Team | Ence esports |
| Games | StarCraft II |
| Status | Active |
| Personal information | |
| Name | Joona Sotala |
| Born | March 22, 1998 |
| Nationality | Finland |
Joona "Serral" Sotala is a Finnish professional Starcraft II player.
Serral won every major non-Korean tournament in 2018 on top of the 2018 version of GSL vs the World and the WCS Global Finals[1].
Serral is the first non-Korean to win the year's final, breaking the near-20 year dominance of Korean players in that field.
Starcraft II Career
Serral started playing Starcraft in 2012, but did not initially make a big splash.
He would improve his play steadily, taking a first minor >$1000 tournament win in 2015.
His first major tournament win would come in 2017 with the WCS Jönköping European qualifier win.
His first Premier tournament win, and start of his dominance came in 2018 when he win World Championship Series (WCS) Leipzig. He would go on to win all 3 other WCS tournaments in 2018, getting the first clean sweep of this in the WCS' history.
Serral would also show the Korean scene his prowess in the 2018 GSL vs the World tournament where he took home a $26.901 prize over several of the strongest Korean players.
The year end World Championship Global Finals at Blizzcon featured 2018's eight best non-Koreans and eight best Koreans, including Cho "Maru" Seong Ju, who qualified for the Global finals by making a GSL clean sweep. Serral would win this tournament dropping only 3 maps to become the first "foreigner", or non-Korean, to do so in the history of the Starcraft franchise[2].