MOUZ Sweep Vitality 2-0 to End ZywOo's Worst-Ever LAN Event at BLAST Rivals

HONG KONG — MOUZ swept Team Vitality 2-0 in the quarter-finals of BLAST Rivals Season 2 on Friday, ending the French side's tournament in Hong Kong and confirming the worst LAN event of Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut's career.

The world No. 1 side won Mirage 13-8 and Cache 16-14 after overtime at the AsiaWorld-Arena, and will now face Team Spirit in Saturday's semi-final. The result underlined MOUZ's growing status as one of the leading contenders for the PGL Major Singapore later this month, while Vitality left the event with two unwanted records in the space of two days.

Vitality arrived in the play-offs already wounded. A day earlier, FURIA had handed them their first ever 0-13 map loss in Counter-Strike 2, closing out the Group A winners' match on Mirage without dropping a round. Against MOUZ, the recovery never came. ZywOo finished the event with a 0.91 rating across seven maps, the lowest of his LAN career, and managed only 33 kills against 38 deaths across the two maps against MOUZ, for a 0.86 series rating.

MOUZ opened Mirage by racing to a 3-0 lead on the terrorist side before Vitality steadied. Multi-kills from Robin "ropz" Kool and ZywOo helped the French team stabilise and take the lead, and Vitality still led at half-time despite a clever MOUZ fake that got the Europeans back on the board after straight executes and mid control had failed. The second half belonged to MOUZ. Another pistol-round win gave them control, their proactive defence kept finding picks and information, and Vitality could not find an answer as MOUZ closed out the map 13-8.

Cache followed a similar pattern, only closer. MOUZ won all four pistol rounds in the series, and on Cache they opened 4-0 on defence before ZywOo found impact with a series of multi-kills to haul Vitality back into contention. The game turned scrappy, but MOUZ did enough to lead 7-5 at the break. They looked set to cruise when they took control of the economy in the second half, only for William "mezii" Merriman to rescue Vitality with a stolen round on a P250, and the French side ran with that success to close the gap. Dorian "xertioN" Berman answered with a four-kill round to wrestle back control and put MOUZ on series point, but a more proactive Vitality defence on the counter-terrorist side forced overtime.

Overtime belonged to MOUZ's individuals. Adrian "xelex" Vincze produced the decisive multi-kill at the death to seal Cache 16-14 and send MOUZ through to the semi-finals, completing a sweep that had looked far from certain midway through the second map.

The individual numbers told the story of the series. xelex led MOUZ with 41 kills and a 1.44 rating, while xertioN top-fragged the server with 45 kills and a 1.41 rating. Oldrich "PR" Novy added 36 kills at 1.21, Lotan "Spinx" Giladi contributed 34 kills, and Adam "torzsi" Torzsas finished on 32 kills. For Vitality, ropz was the best performer with 38 kills and a 1.21 rating, Shahar "flameZ" Shushan added 39 kills at 1.13, and mezii finished on a 1.00 rating. But Dan "apEX" Madesclaire managed only 17 kills against 39 deaths for a 0.53 rating, and ZywOo's 0.86 left Vitality with too little firepower to match MOUZ's sharpness.

The defeat capped a miserable week for a team that has spent much of the past two years setting records of the right kind. Vitality had swept Team Falcons 2-0 in their opening group match before the FURIA defeat sent them into the quarter-finals as a high seed, and the draw gave them no respite. MOUZ, meanwhile, had survived a far harder route to the play-offs, losing their opener 2-1 to G2 Esports on November 11 before beating FUT Esports 2-1 in an elimination match the following day, with Cache and Mirage both going to overtime.

Recent history between the two sides had pointed to a close contest. MOUZ beat Vitality 2-0 in the third-place match at PGL Masters Bucharest on October 31, three weeks after Vitality had beaten them in the ESL Pro League final. On Friday in Hong Kong, the world No. 1 against the world No. 3 produced a sweep, not a decider.

For MOUZ, the prize is a semi-final against Team Spirit on Saturday, with the winner advancing to Sunday's best-of-five grand final. The eight-team event carries a $1,000,000 prize pool, with $250,000 for the champions, and it is the final tournament before the PGL Major Singapore, which runs from November 24 to December 13. MOUZ's form in Hong Kong, built on the individual sharpness of xelex and xertioN and a defence that repeatedly found opening picks, has strengthened their claim to arrive in Singapore among the favourites. Should they win back-to-back trophies with victory at Rivals, few would argue against them heading to the Major as the team to beat.

For Vitality, the questions are harder. A 0-13 map, a quarter-final sweep and a career-worst event for their star player amount to a tournament to forget, and they now have little more than a week before the Major to find the form that made them one of the most feared teams in Counter-Strike 2.