Despite joining Team Falcons almost two months ago, Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev has not yet returned to his peak form. The team, as a whole, also appears to need more time to fully develop its strategy.
Team Falcons’ Matches in European RMR A
In the first European RMR for the Shanghai Major, Team Falcons played four matches and were eliminated in the fourth round.
One worrying aspect about their performance is that they only managed to beat Dynamo Eclot, a team that’s currently ranked 43rd.
This means that the world’s most accomplished CS2 coach, Danny “zonic” Sorensen, together with some of the world’s most accomplished CS2 players, underperformed by a lot.
Normally, a roster like this one should easily finish a qualifier in the top eight and defeat the likes of SAW and GamerLegion. But they didn’t.
The first match, played against Eclot on the first day of the tournament, was a success. The score (16 – 13), however, clearly indicates that Falcons were only slightly better than their opponents. The problem would become more obvious in the next three matches.
In round 2, s1mple had to play against Finn “karrigan” Andersen’s team again and made a good match. But FaZe Clan’s superior experience proved to be enough to bring them victory in overtime. The final score was 16 – 12.
The defeat against FaZe was largely expected to happen. But what was not expected was the defeat against the next two opponents, SAW and GamerLegion.
SAW defeated Falcons 5 – 13 and made it look easy. GamerLegion had problems against them on the second map but still crushed them on the first and third.
Needless to say, s1mple was devastated by this elimination. His body language after the fourth round needs no commentary. He isn’t used to losing and he certainly isn’t used to missing Majors. If he wants to return to his previous level, he will need to be more perseverant than ever before.
