This is Counter-Strike at its peak. IEM Melbourne 2025 is Counter-Strike at its peak. If you were watching the Final of IEM Melbourne as your first-ever CS experience, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news – they’re not all this exciting.
Vitality are your IEM Melbourne 2025 champions – here’s how they did it complete the ESL Grand Slam Season 5 victory.
Falcons throw 12:6 lead to lose IEM Melbourne 2025 Final
Credit: ESL
The test of any great Counter-Strike team is how they deal with a best-of-five final, where the depth of your map pool is essential, especially if it goes to a fourth and fifth map. With this IEM Melbourne 2025 Grand Final going all the way to 3:2, there can be absolutely no doubt that Vitality have a top, top map pool right now – the best in the game.
Nothing underlined the true greatness of this lineup quite like map five. 12:6 to Falcons – six chances to close it out. Round by round, Vitality battled back, eventually taking it to overtime with Falcons having thrown six championship points. Vitality needed three overtimes to see it out, but the important thing is they closed it out in what I’m convinced will go down as one of the great Counter-Strike Grand Finals.
This extends Vitality’s legendary win streak to 21 series, the third-longest of all time. Not just that – it also completes the ESL Grand Slam for Vitality, becoming only the fifth team to ever do it. This event was always supposed to be Vitality’s. It may have been harder than they expected in the end, but all the truly great Counter-Strike teams thrive in adversity.
Falcons are still better than we thought, quicker than we thought
Credit: Enos Ku | ESL
Despite their truly awful 12:6 throw on map five, I’ll admit it – even with the addition of m0NESY, I never could have imagined that Falcons would be in a position to push Vitality to the very brink, coming within one round of glory. But I’ll eat my own words – Falcons are far better than I thought they’d be after their first event with m0NESY in the lineup.
Honeymoon periods are a thing, of course, but adding m0NESY for degster is the very definition of “plug and play.” The pieces for Falcons were already coming together when they won PGL Bucharest 2025. Adding one of the best CS2 players in the world to that mix feels like a cheat code. And the scary part? They’re only going to get better. Whether Falcons make more changes or not, their core can now say they’re capable of pushing the best team in the world to their limit, taking them to places they’ve not been over the last few months. With more time to gain synergy on the server, Falcons could be in for a strong period of their own.
Following their IEM Melbourne 2025 Final run, the question now turns to how high Falcons can soar over the next few months. The pieces are in place – could it be that NiKo will finally get his Major in a few months’ time? Or will this giga-throw down under have a lasting impact on their mental game?