Falcons winning the IEM Cologne Major was an incredible full-circle moment for Counter-Strike: NiKo finally got his Major, doing so with a m0NESY who was determined to help him win one, and after reuniting with karrigan, the man with whom he failed to win a Major after their infamous choke to Cloud9 at ELEAGUE Boston 2018.

The season that has followed the Major win, though, has been anything but successful. Plagued by issues with their map pool, and with enemy teams constantly taking advantage of karrigan’s low fragging capacity on the bomb sites he anchors, quarter-final exits have become the norm for the team, just months after everyone expected them to finally challenge Vitality for the number one spot.

That isn’t to say there aren’t any positives from the season, but there is one. A massive one. The resurgence of m0NESY.

m0NESY, after being left behind by ZywOo and donk in 2025, has now firmly put himself back in the conversation for the best player in the world. Dominant with the AWP and more adept with a rifle than most star riflers are, his 1.38 HLTV Rating from the last three months has him sitting at a level that few players could ever hope to reach.

So, with Falcons floundering as their big star shines brighter than ever, how do the team hope to get back to form and finally stake their claim as the best team in CS?

Well, we spoke to m0NESY at ESL Pro League Katowice, and it seems the map pool might be the way Falcons look to do it. The young sniper is fond of Cache, so it could soon sneak its way into their map pool.

m0NESY on Falcons’ map pool struggles

In their run at IEM Cologne 2026, Falcons relied on a punish pick of Anubis. Since then, though, they have pivoted away from Anubis, opting instead to get more reps on maps they aren’t as strong on. However, now that they’re beginning to weave Anubis back into their map pool, they’re finding they aren’t as strong as they once were on the map, and losses to both NAVI and Spirit in Katowice have opened up another troubling hole for the team to close.

But where did these issues come from? m0NESY says that they were there all along, and that teams just hadn’t figured out how to capitalise on them yet in Cologne.

Despite a lot of people being confused by it and saying you guys should play it, you're still not playing Cache. I wanted to know your thoughts on Cache — not the teams', just yours.

I think it's a nice map to play, especially from the AWPer standpoint. If I'm looking from the AWPer perspective, for me it could be a great map to play. But it's also interesting that they add some old maps - maps that haven't been released in a long time. They should do it more often, like bringing back Train, maybe other maps. But on Cache specifically, it's a nice map to play with the team.

I know a lot of people were saying that some of the younger players might not have played Cache, but you've been playing CS pretty much your whole life, so I imagine you have quite a lot of experience on it. Did you always play it back in the day?

I played matchmaking on Cache only — I never played it competitively with teams. I was just having some fun. I was also watching tournaments when teams played Cache back then, but I didn't really have experience with it.

So it sounds like you'd be happy then if Cache were to enter your guys' map pool?

Why not? Yes, yes.

Let's talk about the map pool in general. I know back in Porto, Zonic especially was saying that the map pool wasn't there. You've had some time since Porto — how's the map pool feeling now?

Yeah, I mean, we had some — not issues, not problems, I don't know how to say it — we needed some fixes in our map pool. But I think we had a lot of time to prepare; we had around 15 or 16 days. So maybe a little bit less practice at home. We worked on our map pool; we worked on our maps, on our weak maps, on the weak areas where we didn't feel comfortable, and I think coming to this tournament we improved.
Obviously, if you take the game against NAVI — we lost, for example, Anubis, which is our strong map, but I think we just threw it away. But talking about our maps, I think we feel pretty comfortable. Obviously, you cannot always feel perfect on every map, but I think on our strong maps we're decent, not bad.

When it comes to the problems with the map pool, do you think that maybe, in that sense, the Major win kind of came too early with the time with karrigan — because it kind of raised expectations that the map pool then revealed you maybe aren't there yet to be consistent?

To be honest, I think when we started playing with karrigan, we took second place, we took another second place, and after that it was the Major, where we had a great run, great performance.
I think we already had issues, problems there, but they just didn't pop out at that time. I think it was also just us overperforming. Everyone played differently at the Major, but I think we always had problems — it's just that nobody caught us off guard because of these issues. Nobody hit our weak areas when we had problems.
But since every game we were improving — even at the Major, when we didn't play the best, we were still improving. Obviously, when you talk about the map pool, you just want to be pretty good on every map. You don't want to have any weak maps, and if someone picks his best map, we are also stronger.

So what will it take, then, to become the consistent best team in the world — the number one team in the world? Is it the map pool, or is there extra stuff as well?

Obviously, I think it just takes time to work on every map. If you take the best teams, the best teams don't have the weakest — when you pick your strong map, you don't think like, "oh, this map is the weakest one." You don't want to have the weakest maps. You just want to always improve; you want to work on the team play on every map, because I think the team play is very important — the way you feel with your teammates on the sides, and obviously when it comes to the sides, you just want to always help the mid-rounds; you want to have good utility usage and everything. So it always takes time, and I think [karrigan] and [zonic] worked very, very well during this period of time before ESL.

What motivates m0NESY to succeed?

We also spoke with m0NESY about his career so far, with the Russian AWPer already having won the Big Three tournaments in CS, tournaments most players go their entire careers without winning.

Having already enjoyed so much success in his four years of professional play, something has to keep driving him, and m0NESY is quick to tell us that it’s winning trophies, regardless of where or when they come.

You've now won the three biggest tournaments in the game. What's left for you? What are the goals now? Is it maybe a Grand Slam, is it winning another Major, or is it more personal — like getting the number one in the world?

Yeah, there are still a lot of things to achieve. I think winning the Grand Slam for me would be very important, and also just creating an era together with my team would be important for me. Because just winning a tournament at one period of time and then ghosting for like six, seven months and not winning anything else would not be the best, you know. But if you want to achieve something great, you want to start dominating in CS and create an era together.

What about the HLTV Best Player in the World award? Is that something that motivates you — something that you really want to achieve in your career?

No, it doesn't really motivate me. It's just a nice bonus: if you perform well and people choose you as the best player in the world, then it's a nice feeling, a nice bonus, as an extra part. You come to this game to play as a team. I want to win the biggest tournaments, and preferably to have the most tournaments in my career along with the best players.

Okay, so if in the next three years you could either win one Major, or you would be the top one on HLTV for all three of those years, which one would you pick?

It's hard, knowing I won Best Player in the World and I'm not winning other tournaments. If you would take... It's hard; you need to always discuss it, because winning a Major is important. But I think there are also other tournaments that are just as important as the Major — Cologne, Katowice - Krakow now - also the Grand Slam.
Sometimes maybe people can miss a Major, but they're winning the most important tournaments. So if you become three-time Best Player in the World, I think you have achieved something with the team. I hope so. I'm not sure.

m0NESY names the player he’d love to play with

We ended our time with m0NESY with some quickfire questions, learning more about his issues with CS2 in its current form, and also the players he has always struggled to play against.

You won’t be surprised to hear that both donk and ZywOo feature in that list of hardest players; however, his shout for one player that he wishes he could have played with certainly took us by surprise.

If you could make one update to Counter-Strike, what would it be?

One update... one update. I think I would just add some weapon — some new weapon, maybe for the T side. I think they were about... I just saw some leaks, I think — they wanted to add some M4, something called M4. I'm not sure, maybe M24, not M2, I don't know. Something like that. And maybe I would also bring back the cl_bob — I have one thing — and also just add more maps to the map pool. Just change it sometimes. Maybe not per season, but maybe per six months.

If you could play with one player who is now retired and have him on your team in his prime, who would that player be and why?

I don't have players in my mind right now who are retired and who I'd like to play with, but I think I would love to play with rain. I've heard a lot of good stories and a lot of great feedback about him, so I would love to play with rain. Also, in the past, when I followed CS until now, rain always seemed like a nice teammate — a nice personality for CS.

Who are the top five hardest players you've ever played against?

Yeah, hardest players. Let's say s1mple, ZywOo — I would say, hardest. It's very hard to say. I would say s1mple; I would say the trio — I would say s1mple, ZywOo, donk; I would say b1t, because he was playing in NAVI always, so if you take a full team, I also need to say him. And then I’d say… apEX.

Because he's the IGL?

Yeah, because he's always calling against me.