The $10 million dollar question for Falcons

$2 to $2.5 million for Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov. $1 to $1.2 million for Nikola “NiKo” Kovač. $2 million for Maksim “kyousuke” Lukin. $5 to $6 million for the HEROIC trio of kyxsan, degster, and TeSeS.

On the low end, you are looking at roughly $10 million in buyouts. So did Falcons spend all that money just to make the quarterfinals of the Major? Obviously not, but the Major gave us an idea of what level Falcons were at by the end of the season. Now the question is whether 2026 can be a successful year in the context of a $10 million spend in 2025.

Finalizing the roster

Throughout 2025, Falcons’ roster evolved in waves. The year started with the arrival of the HEROIC trio, degster, kyxsan, and TeSeS, then NiKo followed from G2. This was supposed to be a superteam in the making. In reality, the first version of the 2025 Falcons was average, which made their only trophy feel almost accidental when they won PGL Bucharest by beating G2.

G2 kept popping up in the story of Falcons. Not just as a rival, but as the organization that Falcons kept circling when they wanted to spend some money on a player. The rumors about a bigger offseason agreement never really went away, and even though only NiKo joined at the start of the year, it made one thing clear. Falcons weren’t planning on developing a team of middling players – they wanted to build around superstars.

In April, the project took off when G2 announced the sale of m0NESY to Falcons. The NiKo reunion was the headline, as the two had grown close both in and out of the game. Degster paid the price, benched mid-season, which is about as “Falcons 2025” as it gets.

After seeing donk dominate any competition he faced, and not attaining the success they wanted, Falcons decided to take out the wallet once again. This time, G2 could stay calm, as none of their players fit the criteria: young, Russian and playing for Spirit. And since donk wasn’t available Falcons turned to Team Spirit Academy instead and bought kyousuke for a whopping $2 million.

That transfer finalised Falcons’ roster for 2025 and also changed their goals for 2025. It was no longer just an expensive roster, it was built around both current and future superstars, who needed time to connect. And for all the jokes about the spending an exorbitant amount of money, the results did move. No trophy cabinet glow-up, but Falcons did become a consistent playoff team.

The pressure of the stage

Falcons do not need another roster move right now. If anything changes later, it is probably because TeSeS never really finds his lane in this system, but even that is not the main issue right now. They need time. A team that swapped out every single player within one calendar year is always going to look sharp one week and lost the next, and it gets even messier when two of the biggest changes happen mid-season. For all the jokes about zonic not winning anything with this lineup, there are not many coaches better suited to use an offseason to turn chaos into something repeatable.

The kyxsan and zonic pairing is the reason there is still a lot to like about the long-term outlook. kyxsan is a genuinely underrated in-game leader, and Falcons rarely look completely clueless. The problem is that when it does happen, it has tended to show up at the worst possible time.

Imagine this. Falcons have just scraped into the Major playoffs, and suddenly none of the ugly rounds from earlier in the tournament matter. They are here now. They walk out onto the stage in the MVM Dome in Budapest, 20,000 people in the arena, the drums set the mood and all focus is on the server, and they get destroyed on the first map, their own pick.

Between maps there is one last chance to reset. The plan for the 2nd map is simple. Keep away from donk, put pressure on the rookie zweih, make him feel the moment. First Major playoffs, biggest stage of his life, surely that is where the cracks show.

Falcons storm into the 2nd map of Dust2 and build an 11-5 lead on the T-side. The B hits start coming in and it looks like the series is about to swing. Then the rounds stop feeling clean. The spacing gets weird. The exits out of tunnels get clogged. The confidence turns into hesitation, and hesitation turns into stressed decisions, one more forced buy and one more round that slips away.

On the other side, zweih does not play like a rookie at all. He plays like someone who has decided the stage belongs to him. Falcons find themselves teetering between madness and genius as they keep going B, still with chances to close, and still unable to finish the job. It goes to overtime, and that is where it fully unravels. 16-12 for Spirit, series over, with multiple highlight rounds from zweih being the nail in the coffin.

The heatmap tells the story. Falcons barely made it out of tunnels before getting cut down, again and again, by the player, their whole gameplan revolved around abusing.

Whether Falcons were underprepared or just overconfident in their own firepower is hard to pin down, but the bigger issue was how quickly they ran out of other options. When the original plan fails, a new one has to be made on the fly. The ability to do so comes from reps, structure, and players knowing exactly what their job is – and that takes time.

The best thing that came from the series for both teams is this incredible photo.

In an interview with HLTV earlier in the year, zonic talked about how much time was spent making kyousuke comfortable, and how roles were adjusted for NiKo and TeSeS. That is the reality of building around a young superstar, but it also explains why the team sometimes looks like five players sharing the same space. kyousuke has not looked out of his depth, but the ripple effect has been real, and TeSeS has been the one feeling it the most.

Giving kyousuke star roles isn’t necessarily a problem seeing as Falcons are hoping to grow him into a superstar, but if it comes at the cost of his teammates barely being able to play the game, they need to figure out a different solution.

Is 2026 the year?

Spending money does not automatically buy success, it just buys options. Counter-Strike is full of teams that had the budget to fix their problems and still managed to make them worse. Too many general managers overthink the basics and try to ‘moneyball’ and then act surprised when five random players do not magically become a good team.

Falcons have mostly followed the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. If there is money to spend, spend it on proven pieces that already know how to win, especially when the chemistry is obvious. A core of m0NESY, NiKo, and kyousuke is ridiculous on raw talent alone, and pairing that with a real in-game leader in kyxsan plus an anchor like TeSeS is a recipe for success. The only problem is that trophies do not only come from names, they come from routines, tactics, and synergy, and Falcons barely had any of that in 2025 because the roster changed so often.

If the year ends without a real payoff, the risk is not just disappointment, it could be the roster starting to crack under the weight of $10 million dollar expectations.