Falcons were just one round win away from securing their biggest trophy yet at IEM Melbourne on Sunday.
Despite being up 12-6 on the deciding map of Nuke, Danny “zonic” Sørensen’s men were unable to close it out, eventually falling to Vitality in a dramatic 3-2 Grand Final.
After the tough grand final loss, the Falcons head coach admitted on the ESL broadcast that they ran out of strats toward the end.
– Towards the end of Nuke, I could really feel that our playbook was limited. We haven’t had that many days with Ilya, as I’ve said a couple of times. It was just difficult towards the end, and we had to rely a little bit on the individuals. It’s just one of these games, where it goes back and forth, and unfortunately, they had the upper hand towards the end, zonic said.
The Falcons head coach also pointed to a game-changing moment involving a familiar face on the other side.
– I think there was a ZywOo round at one point… I wouldn’t say it destroyed our mood or anything. But I’ve been working with this guy and he just have these rounds you know. I instantly took a timeout afterwards and said “This was just a ZywOo round, we need to get through it.” But then they kind of slowly crawled their way back.
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“Excited about the future”
IEM Melbourne marked Falcons’ first tournament with Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov in the lineup. Despite limited preparation, zonic said there were plenty of positives to take away from their run in Australia.
– There are a lot of positives to take with us. We have been grinding. There’s been no one sitting and relaxing in the practice room. If it wasn’t for playing then we would have been doing theory crafting or getting Ilya through the strat book. So it’s been constant work. We have tried our best, and I’m super proud of the five guys – they have done an amazing job, and I’m only excited for the future.
You can watch the post-match interview with zonic below.
