A rematch of the IEM Melbourne final, palms dry, knees strong, arms light, tensions not really that high, could Falcons break the Vitality streak? One might have thought so at first.

The five-map final began on Inferno, with m0NESY dunking on the reigning champions with a 1.54 rating, and mezii bottoming out at 0.60. ropz and ZywOo held their own though, ropz’s consistency is stunning, if he keeps it up he may even be a top five player this year.

Vitality responded with back-to-back 13-6 wins on Dust2 and Train, with flameZ and mezii propelling the wins with 1.79 and 1.44 ratings, respectively. flameZ up until this point had been rather unassuming, but he showed up to take series point in fashion.

Mirage started to look like a stomp. With a 12-3 score in favor of Falcons, apEX was at one point going 2-14, but Vitality didn’t let go easily, playing unbreakable post-plants as a ZywOo 1v1 took it to overtime.

Falcons managed to lose the man advantage nine rounds in a row. That served as a catalyst for ZywOo and ropz to farm on their CT side, running a woodchipper on A site that the birds kept falling into. Gross.

m0NESY kept Falcons alive with a thermonuclear 35 kills and a gleaming 1v2 clutch to close out the map and force Nuke. TeSeS was also instrumental, delivering several multi-kills in the closing moments of regulation, and some more impact in overtime, setting the stage for another close final.

The final map opened with ZywOo and ropz getting a combined 30 kills, helping their team to a huge seven rounds from the notoriously difficult Nuke T side.

For Falcons, m0NESY had a weak start with only five kills, which would only increase to 13 by the time the final map had drawn to a close. Worse still for NiKo, the Bosnian ended the half with six kills and the map with eight, bottling the trophy in the process. We’ve seen this before.

Vitality won Nuke 13-8 to close out yet another first-place finish, extending their series win streak to 25 since defeat at BLAST Bounty in January. It’s no secret that Goliath has arrived. When will David make his appearance?

Here’s the full series recap:

Inferno: 🇪🇺 Falcons 13-9 🇪🇺 Vitality
Dust2: 🇪🇺 Vitality 13-6 🇪🇺 Falcons
Train: 🇪🇺 Vitality 13-6 🇪🇺 Falcons
Mirage: 🇪🇺 Falcons 16-14 🇪🇺 Vitality
Nuke: 🇪🇺 Vitality 13-8 🇪🇺 Falcons