zonic: "Disappointed, but you can see a change of roles, a new player, even if he's doing amazing"

The Danish coach admitted it was a "bit weird" for kyousuke to play so well, and the team so poorly.

This was not the start to the season Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen and Falcons wanted.

In the headlines during the off-season again, the team's acquisition of Maxim "⁠kyousuke⁠" Lukin was supposed to elevate them up to the level required to contend with Vitality.

If you cannot see the embed, listen to the interview here.

kyousuke played his part, ending his debut Big Event with a 1.39 rating. But the team's run has ended with a 9-12th placed finish after losses to FURIA and The MongolZ.

"Without disrespecting FURIA or anything, of course we expected that we should be able to beat them," zonic said to HLTV, admitting it was a "little bit weird" that kyousuke could debut so well without team success to match.

"Bit disappointed, but you can also see a change of roles, a new player in, even if he's doing really amazing."

Part of how Falcons secured kyousuke was that, unlike in Spirit, he could operate as the team's primary spacetaker on T side.

That has meant a shift for Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač out of those roles into a primary lurker, playing spots like Palace on Mirage and Upper B on Dust2. The Bosnian said he "felt really good coming into the event" but ended with a 0.91 rating (0.86 on T side) — his worst ever Cologne, and his fifth lowest-rated Big Event ever.

René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen has also had to take up anchor roles on CT side after the decision was made to keep him instead of Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif.

Read more

NiKo: "I felt really good coming into this event, so maybe just an off day"

There was also trouble with communication, zonic admitted: "We had some troubles with communication, I didn't feel enough energy yesterday against The MongolZ."

Troubles with callouts are to be expected, given kyousuke's inexperience with tier one and with English itself, but zonic will be frustrated that some patterns from Austin were repeated from the core quartet.

It's more than just Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov and NiKo's firepower failing to materialize in the server, too. Falcons managed to lose a 4v1 against Garidmagnai "⁠bLitz⁠" Byambasuren on Dust2, reminiscent of the famous botched retake against MIBR. The team's macro play was also criticized as "bad" by pundit Janko "⁠YNk⁠" Paunović.

Even basic smoke grenades were missed. "On Dust2, we saw some things that happened against MongolZ," zonic explained. "[molodoy] played a good game, and we missed the Mid Door smoke twice. That also made us scared and we couldn't keep up the pace."

A lack of practice, or any real warmup event before one as big as Cologne, means that this Falcons roster should not panic. But after such high-profile failures in Austin and now Cologne (let alone prior disappointments in 2024 for zonic), it would only be human to start to worry.

Date	Matches
IEM Cologne 2025
26/07/2025	Falcons Finished 2:0 GamerLegion	Match
27/07/2025	Falcons Finished 0:2 The MongolZ	Match
28/07/2025	Falcons Finished 1:2 FURIA	Match

Read more

Stat Check: Falcons triple up on Openers for another gambit at Vitality's crown