Serral

Joona Sotala, better known as Serral, is a Finnish professional StarCraft II player using the race Zerg. In 2018, Serral became the first non-Korean player to win the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS). He won every major non-Korean tournament in 2018, the 2018 Global Starcraft II League (GSL) vs. the World event and, ultimately, the 2018 WCS Global Finals. In 2022, he won the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice, and with the updated championship format he won the world championship of StarCraft II for the second time. StarCraft II Career Early career Serral started competing at StarCraft II in 2012, but did not initially make a big splash. His first major tournament win would come in 2017 with the World Championship Series (WCS) Jönköping European Qualifier win, beating Zanster, Mana, ShoWTimE, Namshar and Elazer. He took 2nd place in the main event after beating Stephano, PtitDrogo and Elazer, but lost 3–4 to Neeb in the Finals. In 2017, he also won the European Qualifier for WCS Valencia, taking out Stephano, Bly, HeRoMaRinE and Elazer twice. During the main event, he was knocked out in the quarter-finals by TRUE. Serral won the European Qualifier for World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) by beating Clem, NightEnD, Starbuck, Majestic, uThermal, Elazer and Nerchio. In the main event, he did not lose a map during group play, beating ShoWTimE, Minato, Has, Elazer, Bly and Lambo. During playoffs, he beat Neeb in the quarterfinals, but lost 0–3 to the eventual champion Maru.