The semifinals of IEM Katowice 2025 are scheduled to be played this Saturday. Both matches look very exciting.
Natus Vincere will need to defeat their nemesis, Team Spirit, for the second time in this tournament if they want to advance to the Grand Final.
Meanwhile, The MongolZ will make another attempt to beat Team Vitality at a big event. Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and his teammates defeated them three times in 2024 and very little has changed since then.
In fact, Vitality’s roster is now stronger than last year thanks to the signing of Robin “ropz” Kool, who is one of the best rifler lurkers in the world.
Team Vitality vs. The MongolZ
To get to this stage, The MongolZ had to beat Team Liquid, Gamer Legion, and Eternal Fire. They only lost one match, against Natus Vincere, and the teams they defeated were quite strong.
In particular, Eternal Fire finished 2nd at BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 and managed to win a map even against Team Spirit.
Vitality’s path to the semifinals was not easy either. But it was more direct. The French team did not lose a single match and defeated 3DMAX, FaZe Clan, and Virtus.pro.
Arguably, only the victory against FaZe was relevant and it’s clear from FaZe Clan’s group stage elimination that they weren’t in great shape at this tournament.
It’s starting to become obvious that ropz, and even Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken who left a year ago, were instrumental in the team’s epic success in the years 2022 and 2023. With both of them out of the roster, there’s very little hope for FaZe in 2025 and the coming years.
This match favors Vitality quite significantly. The most likely score is 2 – 1.
Natus Vincere vs. Team Spirit
Na’Vi looked great in the first match against Spirit but would have likely lost under normal circumstances. The only reason why the Ukrainian team won was the spectacular performance of some of its players in key rounds that ended up determining who won the map.
In this second match, Spirit will most likely crush Na’Vi and they might even do it without losing a single map.
