After dominating in the first half of 2025, Vitality’s Counter-Strike 2 team have finally added another trophy to their collection with victory over Falcons at ESL Pro League Season 22. Their trophy drought lasted four frustrating months but came to an end thanks to an emphatic win.

The win in Stockholm sees Vitality claim a remarkable eighth trophy of the year, with their previous one coming at the BLAST Austin Major in June. Trophies have slipped out of their hands on multiple occasions since then, but the team kept up impressive form, placing within the top four or higher at every event they have played since then.

Vitality Win 8th Trophy of 2025

The French organization looked back to their best as the tournament progressed, but that wasn’t the case in their opening match. Doubts were cast about whether this team would ever lift a trophy again, as they fell 2-0 to underdogs Gentle Mates in a surprising defeat.

However, Vitality bounced back from that loss, taking down GamerLegion, HOTU, and G2 to advance from the Group Stage with a 3-0 record without dropping another map in the process.

Their quarter-final game saw them pitted against a FURIA team that came into the event fresh off winning their first tier one trophy at FISSURE Playground 2. After dispatching the Brazilians with a 2-1 scoreline, they then did the same to FaZe, ending Havard “rain” Nygaard’s final miracle run with the team.

Facing Falcons in the Grand Final, the game looked set to be a bloodbath as the Saudi organization had finally seemed to pick up steam during the event. That wasn’t quite what the viewers received, though.

Instead, Vitality steamrolled the final game, picking up a clean 2-0 victory thanks to a dominant showing from Shahar “flameZ” Shushan. A return to form for the Israeli star, he recorded a 62-41 stat line to give Falcons little chance of fighting back.

The series began with a 13-10 on Inferno, which was the closest any of the maps got as Falcons fought back from 11-6 down to 11-10 thanks to some clean shots out of Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov. Vitality were comfortable on maps two and three, though, winning Train and Dust2 13-9, 13-5, respectively.

For their troubles, Vitality will receive a first-place prize of $100,000 as well as $150,000 club share, proving that their glory days are far from over. There will be no MVP award for Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut this time around, however, as his 1.28 Rating across the event was eclipsed by m0NESY’s 1.38 Rating, seeing the Falcons superstar take home the fifth MVP award of his career instead.