We have our IEM Katowice 2025 Finals, with Spirit remaining in the hunt for back-to-back titles in Poland. Meanwhile, Vitality are just one match away from their first-ever championship in the Spodek – this is how both teams brute-forced their way into the IEM Katowice 2025 Grand Final to set up a very rare clash between the two, having only faced each other three times since the start of 2024.
Vitality brush aside The MongolZ
Credit: ESL
The first match in the IEM Katowice 2025 Semi-Finals was hardly competitive. Vitality vs. The MongolZ was one I expected to at least go to three maps, but the Asian team simply ran out of steam and ideas quickly in this 2:0 series. Truthfully, the 13:7 and 13:9 scorelines don’t quite capture how one-sided this one was – there was only ever going to be one winner when Vitality got going.
This was a massive fall in individual level from The MongolZ, which essentially neutered their threat in this series. Of course, there were individual moments, but when you have ZywOo on the other side of the server, you need some consistency if you’re going to get a result. Not here, though. When even apEX and mezii are fragging, you know you’re in for a bad day.
Spirit get rid of NAVI in two
Credit: Helena Kristiansson | ESL
NAVI may have beat Spirit earlier in IEM Katowice 2025, but when it really mattered in the Semi-Finals, it was the latter who came up trumps. While the score may have been the same as Vitality vs. The MongolZ at 2:0, this was a much closer affair. On Mirage, NAVI just got donked, showing why there’s nothing you can really do when the young prodigy is in this kind of form. Spirit required overtime on Dust2 to get over the line, extending their unbeaten streak on the map in 2025.
Truth be told, Dust2 should have been over long before it got to overtime, though. The number of man advantages and losses against low buys Spirit managed to throw was almost unbelievable, and they’d have been kicking themselves had this somehow gotten to a map three. It was once again the donk and sh1ro show that separated these teams – NAVI just don’t have a star on the level of either of these two at their best.