ZywOo annihilates FURIA to win Vitality IEM Krakow

Welcome to the new year, same as the old year.

Team Vitality continue to be the best team in the world, but this time they've even beaten FURIA in a BO5, which was probably the last hurdle for them to be undeniable.

FURIA managed to go 1-0 up in the series but after that it was all Vitality; and in truth, map one should have been the same story. It's a testament to their strength and resilience that they went on to smash FURIA in the rest of the series.

At the time, FURIA coming back from 9-3 down on Mirage to win in regulation felt like a sliding doors moment, but in retrospect it was a one in a million comeback that would not repeat, and Vitality stormed their way to another dominant trophy.

YEKINDAR drove the FURIA comeback on Mirage, and was the face of the resistance throughout the series, but he was powerless to stop a rampant ZywOo who finished with 90 kills.

ZywOo, clearly angered by the Mirage loss, had it in for molodoy on Inferno and punished every single misstep he made. He wasn't alone in getting picked off constantly, as the Frenchman danced around the map killing everything in sight as Vitality coasted to a simple 13-8 win, and pushed on to Nuke.

Nuke was even easier; as FURIA insisted on hitting mezii's site over and over, and he farmed kills over and over, with ZywOo once more popping up wherever he felt like to claim kills. ropz was quietly efficient, as ever. This one felt like a complete mismatch. FURIA felt out of ideas by about round six, and were constantly in the wrong place. One of the rounds they won, they won despite ZywOo somehow getting behind them and finding a double kill, and that was one of the better rounds.

FURIA needed Overpass to survive.

They put up a much better fight on Overpass, but going down 5-0 to kick it off on their CT side was always going to be a mountain to climb, with Overpass being so favourable to the defence. FURIA won nine of the next ten rounds to go 9-6 up, but won just one of the next eight to lose the series.

ZywOo was, again, untouchable. If there was doubt around his Major MVP, there's absolutely none around this one. He felt ubiquitous, like he was on every angle, already posted, to claim his free kills. He was the driving force behind two map wins, was excellent even in the map defeat, and would have been the best player in the 13-2 had mezii not had a crazy game.

The guy had 90 kills, for crying out loud. In 83 rounds.

Over one KPR, in a BO5 Grand Final against one of the best teams in the world, is astoundingly good. Not only that, he had the fewest deaths, the second most opening kills (YEKINDAR had 17 to ZywOo's 15, albeit with over 3x more deaths), 27 multikills (!) and over 100 ADR.

Performances don't get much better than that, and Vitality won, in the end, at a canter.