Vitality, with the recent addition of Estonian superstar Robin “ropz” Kool, have already found immeasurable success, dismantling Spirit 3-0 in the IEM Katowice Grand Finals.
The international roster did not enter IEM Katowice as the favourites. Naturally, people looked at Spirit as the current world’s number one. Spirit ended 2024 winning the Shanghai Major, they continued their form into 2025 when they also won BLAST Bounty, the first tier 1 event of the year.
ropz joined the french organisation heading into this year and qualified for the LAN stage of BLAST Bounty, but fell in the first round to Eternal Fire, the subsequent finalists. Due to this start of the year, people did not expect them to make their way to the Grand Finals of Katowice only dropping one map to FaZe.
In the Grand Finals against Spirit, the Wonder Kid Danil “donk” Kryshkovets was nowhere to be seen. On the duality, newcomer ropz and MVP Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut played out of their mind. ropz even pulled in his best HLTV rating since 2017 on map 1 with a rating of 2.18.
Vitality lifting the IEM Katowice trophy | Credit: Helena-Kristiansson + ESL
This distinct difference between the teams meant that Vitality came away from this finals with a defying 3-0 win, only really being ever tested on the back end of the third map.
This is the first win of the year for Vitality, and the first win since they won IEM Cologne 2024. Two months since the addition of ropz this team is setting themselves up for success heading into 2025. It is very impressive that ropz has slotted into this roster so quickly, and for Vitaltiy to adjust to some of the role changes.
On Dust 2 for instance the Estonian is playing as the B anchor on the CT side which used to be occupied by William “mezii” Merriman. The Brit has now been moved to middle which was previously taken up by Spinx. These changes certainly worked as ropz had a KD of 26-9 and they won the map cleanly. At BLAST Bounty Vitality didn’t look completely comfortable, but it is clear they have settled in nicely with some of the role changes and new addition.
UKCSGO spoke to mezii about the win and finding this success after the recent addition of ropz:
It feels incredible to win Katowice, a tournament every player dreams of winning. I watched this tournament for so many years before becoming professional and now being one of the players to win it, is insane!
With the addition of ropz I knew we would be a contender quickly but you never know when success will come in CS but I am just happy the positive impact he has had on the team so quickly and how well he has fit into the group. Time to work even harder!
This marks yet another historic victory for mezii whose trophy cabinet is quickly expanding. With a lot of doom and gloom surrounding the UK CS scene recently having a player who came from UK grassroots win on the biggest stages gives our community a beacon of life.
Naturally, mezii finding his success internationally is not going to magically fix everything wrong with the UK scene. But what it does do is give people in the UK someone to identify with and show that it is possible. There will be people watching mezii lift one of the most prestigious trophies counter-strike has to offer and will use that as a source of inspiration. Seeing a UK player attain the success mezii is having will drive others in our struggling scene to aim for the highs that players from our islands are clearly capable of obtaining.
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