m0NESY: "When I looked at other teams, there was only one I wanted to join"

The Russian sniper joined the All About Counter-Strike podcast to discuss his decision to join Falcons.

Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov ended his three-year stint in G2 after PGL Bucharest, where he and his team reached the final but couldn't finish the chapter on a high.

As fate would have it, G2 clashed with m0NESY's future team Falcons for the trophy, and Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen's troops were too much to handle for G2 in a one-sided match.

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Falcons defeat m0NESY's G2 to win PGL Bucharest

Adding to the narrative-rich finale, Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov claimed the HLTV MVP award after he delivered a standout performance in his final showing before being succeeded by the 19-year-old prodigy on Monday.

During the event, m0NESY joined the All About Counter-Strike podcast to talk about his long G2 stint, joining Falcons, and reuniting with Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač with hosts James "⁠BanKs⁠" Banks and Jonatan "⁠Devilwalk⁠" Lundberg.

m0NESY's move to Falcons has been expected for a long time and nearly came to fruition during the winter off-season, but the two organizations couldn't come to an agreement at the time.

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Sources: m0NESY likely staying at G2 despite Falcons interest

"It wasn't set in stone," m0NESY said about the move on the podcast. "When NiKo left, it was pretty hard to understand how we're going to play on the CT side.

"He was doing a lot, kind of babysitting us in a way, where to rotate, and which decision to take. We tried to find our game and identity, but we couldn't do it."

G2 began the season with a playoff appearance at BLAST Bounty, but couldn't find any consistency and massively struggled against top 10 teams — with their biggest scalp of the season being a win against The MongolZ at BLAST Open Lisbon.

m0NESY therefore started looking around for options with his contract set to expire at the end of the year, and said there was only one team in his eyes.

"When I looked at other teams, there was only one team I wanted to join, and that was Falcons. I didn't have that much belief in the other options. I wanted to play with NiKo. I believe we can win a lot of tournaments together and finally get him a Major."

"Reuniting with him was very important for me. We understand each other very well, in-game and outside the game," m0NESY shared about his relationship with NiKo, while also saying that working under zonic has been a long-time ambition of his.

"When I was in NAVI Junior, I said in an interview that I wanted to work with zonic. You can find it somewhere – I said it. Now I had the opportunity."

m0NESY is expected to make his Falcons debut at IEM Melbourne, set to start on April 21. They have been put into Group B at the event and will meet SAW in their opening match Down Under.

Date	Matches
IEM Melbourne 2025
21/04/2025	Falcons 12:00 SAW	Match