IEM Chengdu play-off, who needs it the most?!
A lot of people have mixed feelings about Falcons. Do you appreciate them for what they are as a Counter Strike team, or do you dislike them cause of outside factors?
I tend to separate the two, I wanna focus on Counter Strike and what the players represent on the server.
Falcons need a trophy to quiet down the pressure within the organization. A team build to WIN trophies, and a team build with a high net spend.
Money isn’t all in competitive Counter Strike, far from in fact. But when you field one of the most talented teams of all time, you need to win trophies to justify it.
MOUZ is another team who desperately needs a tournament victory again. They have one to show for, PGL Cluj Napoca, but that’t not enough. Opposite to Falcons I don’t think the outside world provides the most pressure, in MOUZ its the internal pressure.
You have a team capable of winning trophies, you have a team who’s been involved in many grand finals, but unfortunately also have been unable to fully make it happen.
Chengdu is a great opportunity to finally slay their demons, they need it almost as much as Falcons.
FURIA has been on the uprise for quite some time. One of the most inspiring stories of 2025 has been the resurgence for Fallen with his FURIA. They have unlike Falcons and MOUZ to some degree been able to win trophies lately. All be it it’s not the biggest of big trophies, a win is a win. Which is why it’s also important for FURIA, to take the final step up. Winning a tournament like IEM Chengdu is the final straw, at that point you can not keep them out of the conversation for being one of the best teams in the world.
Vitality naturally wants to win again, but I don’t see it as a make it or break it for them in Chengdu. They wanna equal and maybe surpass Astralis record of 10 trophies in a single year, but outside of that they’ve won so much this year that claiming they NEEED it above teams like MOUZ and Falcons is impossible.
You always wanna win, you always wanna remain the top dog, especially heading into the major, but it doesn’t change much for Vitality. 3rd, 2nd, or 1st at Chengdu, they are still the #1 team of the year, they’re still the favorite to win the Budapest Major.
Astralis and MongolZ falls in the same category, for them being in the playoff is already a huge step in the right direction.
For MongolZ because of the Senzu change that choked the world, and left questions in regards to what we could expect for them. Make no mistake, winning would be fantastic for MongolZ, but we are still so early in the Controlez process, that it’s impossible to know if its a honeymoon thing, or what we can expect from the team.
The same could be said for Astralis. Winning IEM Chengdu would be MASSIVE for Astralis, but they don’t NEED it. They needed to make the playoffs, they need to remain competitive in the playoff, and everything on top of that is a bonus. They’ve already had a great tournament, and winning would be sensational, but wouldn’t change much. I’d give hope of a better future for Astralis, but it wouldn’t make them favorites to win the major, they’ve simple been too inconsistent for the entire year to bank it off a one off result.
Who do you feel NEEDs it the most?