There’s a joke people tell about the Falcons team in Counter-Strike, but jokes often have some truth to them. The joke is that Falcons need ‘one more star’ player to be really good.
Falcons try to be the best team in every game they play. They sign the most famous players they can find. They’ve won two big Esports World Cup Championships in a row, and they’re close to winning another Counter-Strike tournament.
Adding another famous player might make people laugh at them, but ‘one more star’ is something they really need. Falcons won’t keep winning trophies without one more great player.
An Unbalanced Team
Even though they already had Nikola “NiKo” Kovac, no one could blame Falcons for signing Maxim “kyousuke” Lukin. Players like him, who are going to be superstars, don’t come around often. His decision to leave Spirit to get out of Danil “donk” Kryshkovets’ shadow made him a perfect choice for the team.
But signing kyousuke created a problem. Falcons didn’t just have one aggressive player in NiKo – they also had Rene “TeSeS” Madsen. While NiKo might be good enough to change his style to work with kyousuke, TeSeS is not.
TeSeS’ performance dropped a lot after kyousuke joined. In the first half of the year, the Danish player was doing well for Falcons, with a good score of 1.07 and even better 1.15 on the attacking side. In the second half, that score fell to 0.95 (the lowest on the team), and the attacking side score dropped to 0.93.
To make room for their new star, both TeSeS and NiKo had to change how they play. But those changes were too hard for TeSeS. Unlike NiKo, TeSeS has never been a player who can play different styles. He needs to play his natural way to do well, but now he has to play a different style, which hurts the team’s chances.
Jimpphat: An Easy Solution
Fortunately for Falcons, fixing this problem is actually quite simple: they just need better balance in their team. Having no naturally calm player on your team is a problem, and when other teams have players like Lotan “Spinx” Giladi, Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato, and Robin “ropz” Kool doing well, it’s also necessary.
The obvious solution to this problem is the other calm player on MOUZ: Jimi “Jimpphat” Salo. A move for the Finnish player was talked about a lot during the break between seasons, with Falcons being the likely destination. Vitality team leader Dan “apEX” Madesclaire even confirmed this in an interview at IEM Krakow.
Jimpphat is one of the best calm players in Counter-Strike, and he had a score of 1.17 in 2024. He also specializes in holding small areas on maps, which is what TeSeS is asked to do on many maps. It’s no surprise he wants to leave MOUZ either, since his score dropped all the way to 1.04 in 2025 after Spinx joined.
This move just makes sense. Jimpphat understandably wants to play well again, and he could do that on Falcons. With Jimpphat, Falcons would also get a very steady player who is more used to doing what they would ask him to do than TeSeS is, which might help them avoid losing rounds in embarrassing ways.
Until Falcons make a change, it’s hard to see them ever being truly successful in Counter-Strike. They will definitely win a trophy – their firepower is too strong not to – but having a chance at beating the best team Vitality? That’s going to take much more than they have right now.
