IEM Cologne 2025 Results. Main Disappointments and Sensations of the First Tier-1 Tournament of the New Season
The CS Cathedral has closed its doors and will reopen next year with Major status. It’s time to summarize and draw conclusions from an extremely intense and eventful start to the second half of 2025. Many interesting things happened in Cologne that definitely require some reflection and even evaluation. In this material, we will pay special attention to the teams that surprised and disappointed us the most.
Falcons
- Overall impression – 6.5/10
Of course, the community was most eagerly awaiting the debut of this particular team, as they signed the main talent who had been waiting for his chance in tier-1. Absolutely everyone, including their opponents, said this was the roster that had chances to create their own era. And despite the absolutely disastrous result (not making it out of groups), in our view, this take is still relevant. First, kyousuke showed that he absolutely doesn’t care who he plays against, and this is a fundamental conclusion worth making after Cologne.
We don’t want to make excuses for the others, but objectively many players changed their positions and need time to find themselves in the new roster. NiKo’s poor statistics is a new reality we need to get used to, because with kyousuke he won’t have chances to find as many kills. Ilya clearly didn’t get into the game after his break, and the loss to FURIA doesn’t look so catastrophic after their subsequent performance. For now, we’re marking them with a pencil and waiting to see how Falcons show themselves at EWC.
G2
- Overall impression – 6/10
The Samurai found themselves in a similar situation, obviously lacking time for restructuring. The positive moment is that huNter looks great in the captain role (maybe the younger Kovač should also think about this, since he’s giving initiative to the youth?). G2’s main failure is primarily related to SunPayus, and we must admit, we don’t have much hope for the Spanish sniper. It seems we’ll see a repetition of the “zonic’s friend” story for some time, but now SunPayus will be “SaW’s friend.”
It feels like after losing their stars, G2 chose the right development vector, which will at least allow them to maintain a place in the world’s top-10 teams and sometimes take them to playoffs. We can only hope that the Samurai management also looks objectively at their new roster and doesn’t build illusions that with such a sniper they can count on trophies.
Liquid
- Overall impression – 3/10
Looking ahead, we’ll say that such a low rating is primarily related to subsequent online results after being eliminated from IEM Cologne. It’s simply impossible to ignore this – failure in two qualifications for EPL S22 and BLAST Open London, where they lost to Sashi and VP.Prodigy.
Not making a single substitution in the summer transfer window and not utilizing the potential of the Twistzz, siuhy, and NertZ trio looks like a joke. Of course, the forced transition to the European region also played its role, but Liquid cheated with VALVE rules for too long, passing off mixed rosters as American compositions. We’ll give the new coach a bit more time – after all, B1ad3’s school couldn’t pass without a trace – but so far we don’t see any bright spots.
FaZe
- Overall impression – 5/10
FaZe were right not to spend on s1mple’s buyout, as broky really returned after his break in his previous form. But now he’s become literally the best player on the roster, while the others still couldn’t get going. How the veterans will fix this is absolutely unclear. Obviously, a whole series of collectives are simply too much for them now, even considering their good play, and these realities put too much moral pressure on the once-championship roster.
Honestly, top-8 and getting straight to the third stage of the Major would already be a great result by the end of the second season. However, this won’t save FaZe from global changes in winter 2026.
FURIA
- Overall impression – 7.5/10
The Brazilian organization never ceases to amaze and shows incredible progress with their exotic roster. The Brazilians brilliantly managed to unlock molodoy, and this guy is a real sniper, of which there aren’t many left in modern CS. As soon as the Kazakhstani gets to the AWP, FURIA causes problems for absolutely everyone. It’s impressive how the Brazilians work with grenades, especially how good FalleN is at this.
You can see that this roster has quite a high ceiling that can compete for good places and won’t be an easy walk for anyone. The main thing is to acquire stability. We hope regular game tone will benefit the team and not drain energy and stop progress.
NAVI
- Overall impression – 6/10
The loss of jL is still felt, but makazze showed that NAVI clearly didn’t lose in firepower, and maybe even gained. The newcomer wasn’t scared of the arena and even after disastrous starts would return and show good play. The victory on Inferno against The MongolZ is entirely his merit. He didn’t let opponents breathe on banana and held point B solo. What’s concerning is that such a result might be the debut spark of a young player. It’s possible that the successes are related precisely to the desire to prove himself and some euphoria from playing in the arena.
For now, NAVI don’t look like confident top-5, which means regularly making playoffs will be very difficult. In Cologne, everything ended clearly above expectations, but we didn’t see a foundation for the future – everything aligned too perfectly in terms of players’ individual form at this tournament, which gave the result.
The MongolZ
- Overall impression – 5/10
After a confident victory over Falcons in the group, it seemed that the Mongolians had finally strengthened and turned into a tier-S team that would definitely reach a trophy this year. But the defeat to Vitality and the given game to NAVI exposed all the old problems of the roster.
The guys gave away the most painful game on Inferno, after which they couldn’t enter the server on their own peak. Obviously, this is only about morale, and ignoring this problem is absolutely impossible now. They need a quality psychologist, but it’s unlikely that a foreign specialist will be able to establish a good connection, and The MongolZ don’t have people with similar experience in the domestic market. We hope the guys can handle everything independently, because the team’s potential is really huge.
MOUZ
- Overall impression – 8/10
Undoubtedly, the Mice are one of the main triumphants of IEM Cologne 2025, as they managed to stop Vitality and didn’t let them get their 8th trophy in a row. Honestly, this result isn’t even very surprising – MOUZ is now a very balanced team where each player is ready to play for his teammate if someone’s game isn’t going well. The problem is that such “drop-offs” have been quite frequent lately, which doesn’t allow them to get the long-awaited championship. We’re sure the Mice will continue to reach the latest stages and sooner or later will take advantage of the chance to lift the trophy above their heads.
Team Spirit
- Overall impression – 7.5/10
We only saw a real team in the grand final, which allowed the Dragons to win in Cologne. In all other matches, literally the entire game was held by donk’s actions, so we definitely won’t talk about the Spirit era. Why is the rating lower than the same MOUZ? The answer is simple: we didn’t see changes in the game after the newcomer’s arrival. Ivan didn’t win a single important clutch, didn’t show a cool highlight, and in our view – 99% the Dragons would have won this tournament together with magixx.
Danya is undoubtedly a great player already at 18 years old, and demanding teammates show a similar level is stupid, but even greats have bad days. Of course, in donk’s case, this is a normal rating with +KD, but Spirit will only beat tops on the condition that Danya delivers his 1.50. zweih’s arrival didn’t convince us otherwise, but only strengthened confidence in these thoughts. Therefore, we won’t be surprised if the Dragons don’t take any more tournaments in 2025.
Vitality
Overall impression – 7/10
You might be surprised by such a high rating, so we’ll tell you more about them in the next material, where we’ll analyze Vitality’s ended win streak and reflect on their future.
