Three reasons why m0NESY and G2 won't win any more events this season

G2 Esports' victory at BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 is a gift for many Counter-Strike fans. This is one of the few teams where each member has a unique story to tell. Watching the roster, you realise that all five cyber athletes are individuals first and foremost, with a difficult path they had to take to achieve such success.

Winning the BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 is also a gift for the team's fans, who have been starving without trophies since June. However, holidays, on which gifts are usually given, have a tendency to end, so it is worth taking a sober look at the situation. 

Snax and TaZ are legends. But are they so strong against B1ad3 tactics?
First of all, I would like to mention that I respect Viktor TaZ Wojtas and Janusz Snax Pogorzelski immensely - I've been following them for about eight years now and used to play for all their teams (even when they were playing for Polish Dash-3 stacks). That said, I try to look at their skills objectively, without turning a blind eye to the minuses after such a brilliant victory. 

Throughout the event, the championship organisers showed the players short audio fragments from TeamSpeak teams (going off topic - this is probably one of the coolest innovations that gives you a feel for the vibe within the team). And during the tactical pauses TaZ (the moment below was recorded exactly during the tactical pause - you can understand it by TaZ's lip movements) did not shine with his strategies - as we could understand, he is a coach of a completely different format. First of all, he supports the team and gives a charge of motivation, showering compliments on his players. Naturally, when you have such aim-monsters as NiKo, m0NESY and malbsMd in your team, you want to fully realise their best side. And what if it doesn't work?

The approach with motivational charges has a right to life, but tactics always wins on the distance, not skill and moral attitude. In 2024, this was already proved to the whole world by NAVI coach Andrey B1ad3 Gorodensky, who turned Ivan iM Mihai into a terrific reifler and Igor w0nderful Zhdanov into a strong sniper, who got rid of the title of ‘only a replacement for the legendary Alexander s1mple Kostylev’. G2 felt it on their own skin, because before this BLAST the team had not beaten Natus Vincere since IEM Katowice 2023. And from that team only Valeriy b1t Vakhovsky remained in NAVI, and Justin jks Savage and Rasmus HooXi Nielsen managed to leave G2 during that time. 

Don't get your hopes up for G2 - rumour has it that this roster is about to disband
G2 Esports was undoubtedly good in this final, and separately I'd like to highlight Osipov's performance. A 1.42 rating and the clutch that made his team the BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 champions is proof of that. The duo of m0NESY and NiKo is one of the coolest on stage right now - you can feel the players' vibe through the screen. But that's destined to end, perhaps as early as this year.

Back in August, you and I heard information from insiders that Kovacs would be joining Team Falcons in 2025. According to rumours, NiKo has already signed a contract with the new club, so the success of G2 in such a roster can be forgotten. And the final nail in G2's coffin may be the transfer of m0NESY, who was talked about just a day after the team's BLAST win by journalist Richard Lewis. 

No matter how good the rest of the G2 trio is, everyone realises that the head coach of this team was the duo of m0NESY and NiKo - together they can do a lot. To find their replacement is simply unreal, so after their departure G2 is obviously waiting for a hard stage with the rebuilding of the team. Well, the closer the team is to the roster transformation, the more the players will be thinking about the future, which can play a role in the matches.

Competitors don't sleep - NAVI, FaZe and Spirit are preparing to destroy
NAVI, FaZe Clan, Team Spirit and Team Vitality are another reason why the m0NESY collective may not win the remaining events in 2024. We are now seeing the ‘Big Four’ era, where each of the aforementioned collectives are picking up important tournaments. For example, Aleksib Virolainen's roaster Alexi Aleksib has shown solid play throughout the year. But defeats in the finals at BLAST Premier: Spring Final 2024, IEM Cologne 2024 and BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 simply delayed the start of the NAVI era.

G2 Esports beat NAVI in uncomfortable conditions for Alexi Aleksib Virolainen's roster, namely in best-of-5 format. But the forecast for the last three events for NAVI fans is disappointing: IEM Rio 2024 and Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 will be held only with bo3-matches. Only BLAST Premier: World Final 2024 may become problematic for the B1ad3 club.

It should be noted that G2 Esports is an extremely unstable team. NiKo's explosive temperament and m0NESY's hunger for victories played an important role in the last Grand Final, but when the team's rounds don't work out or the cybersports players simply ‘don't fly’, G2 crashes with their own emotions. For example, NiKo's ‘burning’ during official matches has already become a familiar show for many.

The club can also simply not reach the grand final of the very BLAST Premier: World Final 2024, because now G2 has an extremely weak player individually and falling out in important moments - it is Pogorzelski. He may have given us a couple of great highlites during the tournament (pulling off a 1v2 clutch against ZywOo and Spinx), but that is extremely rare. In terms of rating, Snax is not far ahead of Rasmus HooXi Nilsen, who the community has been kicking for micra all along (0.86 for HooXi for 2023 and 0.87 for Snax for the last three months in G2). 

The team also features malbsMd, who has a knack for spotting slumps and not finding moments to make kills. Looking at the history of G2 matches, we see a pattern: if Samayoa is in uncomfortable conditions, his team is almost 100 per cent likely to lose against a top-10 team (in 2024, G2 only managed to beat their opponent once out of 13 times when the Guatemalan's game didn't go well). And considering which positions a cyber athlete is responsible for, his individual form is an important key to the team's success (he holds point A on Ancient alone, stands on A on Mirage with NiKo, is responsible for water and connector on Anubis, and so on).

G2 is the kind of team you want to follow, as everyone in the lineup has their own interesting destiny. TaZ and Snax put aside all offences, starting to work together again (last time together they won at DreamHack Masters Las Vegas 2017). NiKo left the stellar FaZe Clan to start playing alongside his brother huNter-. M0NESY proved once again that he is one of the best players on the professional scene, and malbsMd became the first representative of Guatemala on the dash-1 scene, making a mark for the whole Latin America. But such a bright and emotional team, unfortunately, can't claim permanent victories yet. 

BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 took place from 25 to 29 September in Copenhagen, Denmark. The teams played for a prize pool of $425k and 8.7k BLAST points. In the grand final of the event G2 defeated NAVI with a score of 3:1.