Vitality romp to victory on home soil in last ever CS:GO Major

Bringing the curtain down on almost 10 years of CS:GO Majors, Vitality put a bow on multiple storylines with their historic victory.

Vitality has secured the final CS:GO Major trophy and fittingly they have done it in front of a home crowd, besting GamerLegion 2-0 amidst a raucous and emotional arena. The Franco-Danish combine battered GamerLegion 16-6 on Overpass before sealing the deal with a 16-13 win on Nuke.

With this Major victory Vitality have written beautiful endings to a series of magical storylines that played out over these weeks in Paris.

Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut, arguably the best player to have ever touched the game, won the Major that players of his caliber surely deserve. Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi became the first Israeli player to ever win a Major. Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen and Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen became the only two people to have five CS:GO Major trophies to their name, an accolade they will now hold forever. apEX became the player who has suffered the longest wait between Major trophies, having won DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca in 2015.

What is more poetic is the fact that Vitality managed to do this on home soil, the country of origin of their organization and of two of their players. Throughout the tournament they were driven forward by the fervent support of an unashamedly partisan crowd, and as they secured the title tears flowed not only in the eyes of their leader Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire, but also in the eyes of many of the spectators as well.

The match itself was nearly entirely one-sided, with Vitality utterly dominating three of the four halves played. It was only on the T side of Nuke that they looked in any danger of letting the match get close, as Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan produced a superlative 23 kills to haul his team to a 10-5 half-time score.

The problem for GamerLegion is that was just about all they could muster. The entire squad was a level below their counterparts for the rest of the match, and arguably this final emphasized just how reliant they were on iM to get the bulk of the fragging done on their run to the grand final. Not a single GamerLegion player mustered a 1.00 rating or better across the series.

Regardless GamerLegion can be thrilled with the Cinderella story they wrote for themselves at this Major, coming into it as a heavily unfavored side sat outside the top 30 of the world rankings. They even lost their opening two games of the tournament against some of the weakest teams in attendance, making the monumental run they made to the final against all the odds even more spectacular. iM was the rock upon which this run was built, providing immense fragging in an aggressive role to carry his squad with superstar-level numbers.

Vitality, by contrast, were one of the favorites coming into the event and they wore the title with confidence, and wore it well. They have become only the second team to win a Major without dropping a map after romping through the Legends Stage, comfortably dispatching all who stood before them in the playoffs, and convincingly besting GamerLegion in the final.