This Vitality streak is nothing short of incredible. Made entirely in BO3s and BO5s, in a game with a punishing CT meta and an MR12 system that can quickly see games grip out of your grasp? For our money, it’s the best streak of all time.

And we haven’t even mentioned the part-time farmers NIP got to play.

They’re the best team in the world. That much is clear. But just how good are the teams behind them? Well, they’re very good. In most other eras of the game, they’d probably be the best team in the world in their own right. That’s a big part of why watching this era of Counter-Strike feels so special – the competition for trophies is fierce.

Or is it?

Given how close Falcons and MOUZ have now pushed Vitality, grand finals are at least delivering on the illusion of competition once more. That’s more than we could say about IEM Katowice and ESL Pro League. Vitality still win of course, but one day they’ll be beaten. We just don’t know when that day will be.

Vitality’s dominance is also making the events they don’t attend feel almost pointless. They’re now just courtesy trophies, available to those who are extremely good, but not quite good enough to dethrone the kings. They don’t even answer anything unanswered anymore. After Vitality, the three next-best teams are as follows: Falcons, MOUZ, Spirit. In that order.

And considering Spirit’s form against the other top four teams, they’re fortunate to still be in that tier.

After those four, truthfully, the competition looks bleak. Sure, there are teams like The MongolZ, Aurora, maybe even Liquid, FaZe, and NAVI, but do you really expect any of those teams to break the mould? We don’t.

The point is, Vitality are really bloody good. And they’re going to stay that way. Some time away to practice for Falcons or MOUZ might change some things, Spirit winning in Astana might even make them remember they like lifting trophies. But Vitality are still going to be the top dog.

They’re Goliath. We don’t yet see a David. There’s a massive gap between them and their chasers, and an even larger gap between those three teams and the teams chasing them.

Counter-Strike is ridiculously competitive right now, but maybe only if you’re into a mid-table battle. The first-place winners and the Champions League places are already locked in - Who’s going to force their way through to change that?