The Turkish team shone in their second series this year before Falcons.

Eternal Fire defeated Falcons for the second time in 2025 in the opening round of IEM Katowice phase 2, marking Nikola's Lan's debut "⁠niko⁠" Kovač and the former heroic frame under Falcons.

This result pushed Falcons in a difficult position when they were pushed down to the lower branch, where they would confront the team lost in Virtus.pro vs. G2.

One of the risks in this situation is that Virtus.pro has had many bo3 matches to get used to the system of competition in Katowice, including new seats and screens, while Falcons only play 38 round from two ventricles. Losing 13-7 and 13-5 on Inferno and Train. Another psychological danger: The confrontation can occur with the old G2 team of Niko.

The teams from phase 1 have certain advantages

"We have the advantage of playing with a new screen and seat," Engin "⁠maj3r⁠" Küpeli shared with Freya "⁠freya⁠" Spers in the interview after the match. "We played two BO3 matches in phase 1, and that also contributed help, but I thought we had played a very solid Counter-Strike match."

This impressive form followed the good achievement after Eternal Fire reached the Blast Bounty final, where they defeated Falcons 13-6 on Inferno and 19-17 on Nuke in the online round. In addition, they also had two consecutive 2-0 victories over Heroic and Complexity in the first phase of IEM Katowice.

The opening match of phase 2 between the two teams has many similarities with the previous online encounter, when Eternal Fire won 13-7 on Inferno. "I made some wrong decisions, many situations attacked the enemy Stack," Maj3R admitted, "but today my team's fire is too excellent. Although I went into the area where the four -person stack on A was on A , we still win the Round, so today everything goes smoothly with us. "

Jottaaa is integrating well

One of the reasons for Eternal Fire to explode is thanks to the Samet "⁠jottaaa⁠" Köklü, who has reached the rating 1.48 - his best personal achievement since joining the team earlier this year. "He has completely integrated. Sometimes he still has myself, so he certainly became a part of the team!" Maj3r jokes about their rookie.

"Jottaaa is a very hard -working person. He plays a lot of faceit, watching demo often ... I find him really longing for progress, and that is what I need at this age. I need young people. , full of enthusiasm to help me have more motivation, and I am really satisfied with him. "

Choose a backfire train

Falcons made a bold decision when choosing a train instead of letting Nuke make the map decided. However, this has counterproductive effects, like other teams in Katowice. Earlier, the three teams of Astralis, Complexity and Flyquest also chose the train in phase 1, but all failed. Moreover, at Blast Bounty, this map was chosen seven times but none team won when they picked it themselves.

Notably, Eternal Fire is one of the few teams winning the train in phase 1 after the stressful match against Complexity. And now, Falcons has joined the group of failures with this picking map when Eternal Fire continued to raise their achievements to 2-0 on the Train.

"We played very well on the CT side," said Maj3R, when Eternal Fire started impressive with a score of 9-3. "We do not reveal too many loopholes and also win many important rounds, from Clutch to Defuse. So the score may be slightly fooled, maybe the match is more close than that, but in the end, I am, I am Very satisfied with the team's performance. "