2025 has been an incredible year for Team Vitality. A win at IEM Katowice saw them complete the trifecta of Cologne, Katowice, and a Major, whilst their wins at the BLAST Austin Major and the StarLadder Budapest Major have seen them become the first back-to-back Major winners since the legandary Astralis team of 2018-2019.

Add on the fact they won seven events in a row in the first half of the year, and ended the year on nine events won in total, it’s hard to argue as their British star, William “mezii” Merriman calls them “the best team of all time.”

The Greatest Year in CS History

That said, Vitality’s year hasn’t been without criticism. Following their winning streak and first Major trophy of the year, event wins became increasingly hard to come by. They first missed out on a second IEM Cologne win, and losses in the finals of BLAST Open London and IEM Chengdu to G2 and FURIA seemed to signal that the Vitality era had come to an end. 

However, it’s criticism that Mezii tells esports.net he feels is unwarranted. He said: “We made so many semi-finals and made some finals. Some we should have won, in London we should have beaten G2, but it didn’t happen.

“But I knew in this team, we were so confident that if we were just a bit more connected like we were in the first part of the year, if we listened a bit better to each other, then I was so confident that we’d get back to this level.”

Given the level of competitiveness in elite-level Counter-Strike these days, it’s still quite hard to fathom the actual weight of Vitality’s achievement. In a world where Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov and Danil “donk” Kryshkovets always lie in wait, Vitality has still managed to put itself on a level with Astralis, a team so dominant that it appeared no one would ever match them.

https://twitter.com/StarLadder_CS/status/2000288978742686101

A big reason for that, though, is the strength of their stars. Although there is an argument for m0NESY being the best AWPer in the world, and donk is certainly the best opener in the world, Vitality have the best IGL in Dan “apEX” Madesclaire, best lurker in Robin “ropz” Kool, and the best player in Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut. Even mezii, the quiet and unassuming Brit, has announced himself as an elite anchor, the necessary glue that all elite teams can’t hope to win without.

“I’ve never been someone who focused so much on the individual aspects or focused too much on being the best in my role,” he said. “But I said to myself after going to the HLTV Awards last year and seeing all these other players and all these other teams winning everything, it made me say ‘this needs to be our time and me individually, I need to be part of this, finding my impact and stepping up as that second voice.’ So yeah, maybe for this year I’ve been the best.”

As CS2 heads towards its 2026 season, and as Vitality reminded everyone just how strong they are with their dominant grand final victory over FaZe Clan, they may well go down in the history books as the greatest team of all time. However, with a busy rostermania expected, they’ll have to maintain their current level if they want to remain the best team right now.