French giants Vitality have defeated mousesports, who won the last three offline CS:GO events in a row, in a best-of-three series to win EPICENTER today.
Since mousesports lost this event, it marks the end to their incredible run. For Vitality, however, they’re just getting started. This is the French side’s first offline tournament victory since June, when they won the ECS Season 7 Finals.
Vitality have looked impressive throughout the event, but it was mainly due to one man: 19-year-old AWPer Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, arguably the best player in the world. He single-handedly won Vitality this series with his incredible statistics, finishing with 87 kills. The closest person to him was in-game leader Alex McMeekin, who finished with 60 frags.
Vitality conceded the first map to mousesports after an intense battle on Inferno. The map was back-and-forth between two of the best teams in the world but mousesports were able to close the map 16-14, stealing Vitality’s map pick.
But Vitality didn’t go down without a fight. Although David “frozen” Čerňanský pulled off an incredible one-vs-three to secure his team round 12, it was to no avail. The French side steamrolled mousesports in the latter-half of the game, beating mousesports on their pick, Mirage, 16-12.
This sheer aggression from Vitality would continue into the third and final map, Nuke. ZywOo would have another stellar performance, but this time the French tank Cédric “RpK” Guipouy stole the show. Mousesports conceded the third and final map 16-9, ending their incredible run.
Vitality have ended their year on a high and will look to potentially win the next Major in May.
