Vitality lost 1–2 to The MongolZ in the Esports World Cup 2025 semifinals and recorded a third consecutive top-four finish. After the match, MN spoke with William mezii Merriman about the team’s current problems, their struggles on Mirage and Nuke, and the challenges facing the professional Counter-Strike scene in the United Kingdom.
This is now your third tournament in a row with a top-four finish. What is going wrong compared with the excellent first half of the year?
Overall, I think we are not always clicking as a team.
— mezii
The problems can be different from game to game. Today was something new, because we simply could not get into the match.
On Nuke, they did a good job of finding opening kills on their CT side. The T side is always difficult anyway, and there were some important rounds that we could not win. The MongolZ gained momentum, and that made things tough.
On Mirage, we had some good rounds on the T side, although it was not our best performance. On the CT side, we lost a couple of eco or force-buy rounds when they did not have the strongest buy. That always makes it difficult to close out a game.
For us, it is now about getting back to improving, making sure that we are properly connected within the team, and being on the same page inside the game.
I am confident that we can do that. We know what we need to work on. It is just a matter of time and making sure that we all do the right things individually as well.
Why do we see so few players from the United Kingdom these days? In the past, there were players such as smooya, Surreal, Thomas, and others, but now it is mostly you and perhaps azuwu at the highest level.
I am not really sure that there is one specific reason.
