Some of us could feel it even before it happened, so the 3 – 0 victory obtained by Team Vitality against Team Spirit in the Grand Final of IEM Katowice 2025 is not completely surprising. But it still feels surreal.
Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and Robin “ropz” Kool are now confirmed to be a formidable duo, probably the best in CS2.
Given that almost every other team in the game has made roster changes that created synergy issues and weaknesses, these two players have a high chance of dominating the professional scene for the next 3-6 months.
After that, if the likes of Spirit, Natus Vincere, and G2 Esports train hard and get their act together, the situation might start to change.
But for the first half of 2025, this Team Vitality roster looks unbeatable and fully capable of establishing an era of dominance similar to that of other great teams of the past, including NAVI, FaZe Clan, and Astralis.
Vitality’s Victory Against Spirit
Vitality and Spirit entered the Grand Final of IEM Katowice 2025 with high ambitions and the big question on everyone’s minds was this: will ZywOo and ropz play better than Danil “donk” Kryshkovets and Dmitriy “sh1ro” Sokolov?
By the end of the first map, we already knew the answer. Spirit got absolutely destroyed on both Dust II (13 – 6) and Nuke (13 – 5). These were maps that they knew well. But Vitality obviously studied the replays of Spirit’s previous matches and came prepared.
They knew exactly what to do in every situation and were also helped by the fact that donk underperformed, largely because of the pressure. He’s still just 18 years old and a big stage like the one in Katowice can be intimidating.
On the third map, Mirage, Vitality won the first half 8 – 4 and then struggled for a bit. But they still ended up winning the map 13 – 11. Needless to say, the whole crew was happy with this result, which practically confirmed that the roster change that was made a few months ago was a smart one.
