Falcons defeated Vitality 2–1 in the Esports World Cup 2025 third-place match and finished the tournament with the bronze medal. After the series, gridge spoke with Ilya m0NESY Osipov about Vitality’s downturn, kyousuke’s second event with Falcons, and the AWPer’s personal goal for the rest of the year.
Congratulations on the victory! How does it feel to beat a team that used to be your kryptonite? By winning, you also prevented Vitality from securing an additional one million dollars. Do you think their era is coming to an end?
I will start with the last part. Whether Vitality’s era is coming to an end is something we will see in the future, including at their next tournament.
— m0NESY
Right now, they do not look very stable. We managed to beat them fairly comfortably—although that probably sounds a little too bold.
There is a different feeling to the way they play on the server. They used to look more confident and dynamic, and every player was hitting his shots individually. Now it feels as though they have dropped off a little.
But I am not really in a position to say too much because we also performed poorly at this tournament and could have achieved a much better result.
Let us talk about Maksim. What did you think of his second tournament with Falcons? From the outside, it seemed that he dropped off noticeably compared with Cologne.
Honestly, I did not feel that Maksim dropped off compared with Cologne.
Sometimes your individual performance does not depend only on you. If the team is playing badly and our calls are poor, Maksim will suffer from that as well.
Overall, we played well at this tournament, but we performed poorly against Aurora. Before that match, Maksim had been playing very well.
