Loading…
GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
99 trophies and Katowice ain’t one
“Cologne? Tick. Major? Been there, done that. Katowice? Don’t speak to me about Katowice.” - FalleN. Well, maybe. That’s what we’ll reckon he’ll say after ending his time in the Spodek early, having never got to lift a trophy there in his career.
We’ve also been chatting to YEKINDAR, and he said some pretty interesting things about his potential future as an IGL…
FalleN has had a legendary career, but he has never lifted a trophy in the Spodek.
And after that abysmal showing against MOUZ, he never will, either.
We’ve been pretty critical of FURIA recently, but this performance really took the cake for us. A dead team walking FalleN to the grave, even if their replacement for the Professor has wall hacks, they still won’t manage to be competitive against the other top teams.
On the other hand, MOUZ look great, and it seems like Spinx has actually met his match in terms of a bombsite partner that won’t let him send them to the cuck chair. PR is looking very solid now, and that’s exactly what they needed after a bleak 2025 from Jimpphat.
Shoutout to xelex, too. He’s fantastic. He moves us in a way makazze and kyousuke just can’t We love xelex.
Oh, and shoutout to Falcons, who have just been plain disappointing since winning Cologne.
We really thought they’d cracked it at the Major, that karrigan still has life in him. He doesn’t. They hadn’t. Falcons are now having an incredibly disappointing second half of the year, and the battering Spirit gave them has really sunk them even lower in our estimations.
The rest of the games went pretty much as you’d expect them to. Big leads meant that Aurora and Vitality didn’t need to rush to close out their games versus 1win and PARIVISION, but they also didn’t need to exert themselves when the pressure was on, either.
Vitality are Vitality, and Aurora are fast become an elite-level team. We’re looking forward to seeing them lock horns again in the semis.
Let’s just hope the games are a little bit more exciting than the quarters.
And that four BO3 quarter-final days die a swift death. Horrible.
You know what pro players do? Play a lot of CS. You know where they do it? Community servers.
At least we think they do. They don’t really talk to us.
Either way, we play on them a lot over at Wideswing, and we’re all A) cracked at the game and B) so incredibly knowledgeable at the game that you spend your time reading our opinions on it. So, if you’d like to at least be like us, get on Wideswing for Deathmatch, Retakes, 1v1s, and stop playing on whatever sh-t you currently use.
You trust us for everything else, so trust us with this, too.
If I checked the data correctly, this is your third time in Katowice. How was the stage back in 2023 and how does it feel to come back to the Spodek?
Yeah third time in the stage and it's been many times in the city before, there's many good memories here. It's very cool to come back with better weather, because usually it's in February. Last time for me in terms of the Spodek arena was very good memories. We had a great quarter-finals on Liquid the last time I was here against Vitality.
The third map is a good memory because we were losing either 14-3 or 13-3 back in the day when it was first to sixteen rounds, we came back on Overpass. That was something amazing. I come into the same restaurant that we always went to when I was playing in Liquid, the same waitress is still there. She was like "Oh! YEKINDAR", it was pretty cool, so many good memories here.
So you're now part of the city, are there any spots you would like to recommend to people?
I would recommend the place we were eating at everyday in Liquid and I already showed my guys, we're eating every second day there. It's called Patio.
You've had eleven days off in five months, KSCERATO has said that it's quite tiring. Do you think the team has prepped you well for such a stretch of constant tournaments?
As much as you can prep for these constant tournaments, you understand that no prep is going to help you. In this tournament specifically we're encountering some fatigue issues. Especially the Aurora game, we complained a lot about different stuff. It's showcasing that we're not in our best mental state individually, this is something sidde addressed after that game. Coming into the next game against 9z it was a completely different FURIA. Let's hope that this is going to be the FURIA we see in the playoffs in Spodek.
What are your goals for this event and the next stretch?
In my career I've reached finals and semi-finals whilst not playing the best CS. I've also lost playing very good CS in quarters and group stages. For me the most important thing is seeing progression as a team. Even though FalleN is leaving, for us it's very important to come back mentally and come back as a team, then be a unit again. Throughout this year we had many problems we had to face and many things that were not in our control. For me the most important thing is not about the placement but about the feeling in the team. If we are truly leaving the game with the thought that we did everything we could, that is the most important thing for me.
You mentioned in an interview with BLAST that IGLing is too high cortisol, is that something that you one-hundred percent rule out in the future?
It is high cortisol in this moment in my career. I would not do it, there are specific reasons for it. If my team is going to have a role player who is able to do my roles better than me or the same, I would gladly become an IGL. But I still consider myself a very good role player. I feel like if I become an IGL after FalleN retires then the team would not only be gaining an unexperienced IGL, but also losing a very core role player. It was a great experiment, it was good to try it out, but at the same time this is not the time for it. Of course, in the future the door is open.
Is the future of FURIA clear? Do you know what your moves for next year are?
The thing is, we go to all these tournaments and we also need to think about the future, and also think about what players we get, and what's going to happen or whatever. Our brains are going to explode, so this is not our job. Management is doing everything and we are playing the game that's in front of us. We are focusing on the present day that we are in. We aren't thinking about this kind of stuff.
Want to know which retired pro player YEKINDAR dreams of playing with? Watch the full interview on YouTube here to find out.
Interview by btrams & Charlinho
Spirit vs Vitality. In a grand final. It might actually be about to happen.
Just as long as they can both beat teams they should be beating every day of the week, but have lost games to recently…
Ah f-ck, it’s not happening, is it, lads?
MOUZ versus Spirit is the one we have more hope in going the way we want it to. MOUZ may have taken Spirit down in the Swiss stage to go 3-0, but we were there when Spirit smashed them the last time the two teams met on stage back in Porto.
It’s a very different fight when the lights are bright.
As for Aurora versus Vitality, well, we’re not 100% sure. Ignoring the fact that apEX might have to leave for the birth of his child any minute, Aurora are just quite good right now. And they’re only getting better each day.
Maybe they’re not yet good enough to beat a rolling Vitality, and they certainly are rolling right now, but they did take them in the upper bracket final back at StarLadder - and that does count for something.
Still, we can hope.
We’ve been starved of good finals this year, and it’s time we had one come our way.
Besides, it’s the Spodek. The original Hall of Heroes. It deserves to go out with a bang.
Pray to the CS gods that they smile down on us.
Fun fact: flameZ has more jumping kills than any other tier one pro. Why does he? Because he takes fights like this.
What an absolutely mental c-nt. Love him.
Source Twitch:
