FaZe Clan played their first match with Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyljev at IEM Dallas 2025, but unfortunately for them, Team Liquid were ready and won the series convincingly.
S1mple and FaZe had a chance to make the series more interesting as they put up a good fight on Ancient, the first map of the series, but Liquid prevailed in the end and won by 13-10.
The game then moved on to Inferno, and despite a couple of clutches from s1mple, FaZe lost by 13-10. It’s hard to blame the individuals, as FaZe are also playing the tournament with Felipe “skullz” Medeiros instead of Håvard “rain” Nygaard, so they have little to no time to build their tactical repertoire.
That said, the expectations for s1mple were high as he’s been away from the servers since November 2024. S1mple didn’t disappoint at all and was arguably FaZe’s best player in the series. The GOAT has plenty of time to warm up even more, as he’ll stay in FaZe until the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025.
s1mple talks about his return to competition
Can s1mple regain his old form and help FaZe reach the IEM Dallas 2025 playoffs? Credit: Luc Bouchon | © ESL
S1mple has been on an infinite break ever since 2023, when he stepped down from NAVI’s CS:GO roster. The three-time best player in the world barely played CS2 competitively, having only played a few matches for Falcons as a substitute last year.
He shared some insight about his return in a quick interview with Freya Spiers at IEM Dallas 2025.
“I’m feeling great,” s1mple told Freya. “Looking forward to playing the first game. I was practicing nades every day and playing DM with bots. I was learning new positions on seven different maps.”
S1mple also said that he missed competition “a lot”, especially playing in front of the fans, and he hopes to help FaZe advance to the playoffs of IEM Dallas.
FaZe and s1mple’s pathway to the IEM Dallas 2025 playoffs is hard, though
To reach the IEM Dallas 2025 playoffs, s1mple and FaZe will have to win three consecutive best-of-three series in the lower bracket of group B. That will be a tall task, undoubtedly, given that s1mple is learning their playbook and they have skullz as a stand-in for the remainder of the event.
IEM Dallas’ group B also features the likes of MOUZ, Falcons, and Aurora, who are among the favorites to reach the playoffs. With that in mind, FaZe will have to defeat at least one of them to reach the playoffs, as the top three teams from each group will advance.
FaZe will play their second IEM Dallas match tomorrow against the loser of MOUZ vs. BC.Game, and they must win to avoid an early elimination.