NiKo: "I'm happy that the progress is showing"

The Bosnian star spoke of EWC as a "super important tournament" for the team's confidence.

Falcons booked a spot in the semi-final stage of the Esports World Cup with a 2-1 victory over MOUZ, setting up a clash with Aurora in the next stage of the $1.25 million tournament.

For the Falcons organization, winning the Esports World Cup is a matter of immense pride. This adds an extra layer of importance to a tournament where the team is looking to prove its doubters wrong after a disappointing showing at IEM Cologne, Maxim "⁠kyousuke⁠" Lukin's first event with the squad.

Date	Matches
Esports World Cup 2025
23/08/2025	Aurora 20:20 Falcons	Match

"We also knew how important this event is for Falcons, but we really focused a lot on ourselves," Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač said after the match. "Not just because it's EWC, but this event was just super important for our confidence right now."

NiKo also touched on kyousuke's integration into the team and entry to life in tier-one. He compared the process kyousuke is going through to what Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov experienced when he joined G2 in 2022.

"Their understanding of the game is on a very high level so we don't have to go too deep into explaining why we are doing certain things," NiKo said. "Maybe he didn't play amazing yesterday but he still can find impact in the rounds.

"Now it's just all about developing him as a player, making sure people cannot counter him with certain things and so on."

Listen to the interview here.

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Is it different for you playing this tournament knowing it's a home tournament for the organization? Does it feel different to play?

I wouldn't say so because we had a very high focus on ourselves for this event. We knew that we couldn't really allow another early exit to the event, so we really put a lot of effort in these past two weeks after Cologne. I'm happy that the progress is showing and I'm happy that we are able to close out these games as well, that maybe we used to struggle in with the previous roster.

As I said, we didn't really come with the mentality that we are on home turf. We obviously kind of... we didn't discuss it, but we kind of knew it, and we also knew how important this event is for Falcons, but we really focused a lot on ourselves. Not just because it's EWC, but this event was just super important for our confidence right now.

Was that part of the logic behind skipping BLAST Bounty, to give yourselves time to prepare for this event?

I think there are a couple of reasons and I cannot really share them all. One of the reasons why we skipped BLAST was kyousuke's visa, he's 17 and it's not the easiest to secure his visa, especially because we don't have an organization from Europe, which makes it more difficult.

The other thing is we think that FISSURE is a better event than BLAST, so we obviously chose FISSURE in Belgrade over BLAST London. I think a lot of teams that play those BLAST events are not super happy with how everything is going there, so I'm happy with the decision we made.

Obviously it could be costly if we had lost here in the first game as well, then we would have kind of skipped another two events and would be in a pretty bad position. We had to accept it, we couldn't really do much about it. We could benefit from having extra games in general, because of having a new team, but it is what it is.

How is kyousuke settling in, and how are you finding his development on the roster so far?

kyousuke has been really easy to integrate into the game. I think it's a very similar story to when we brought m0NESY in back in G2, their understanding of the game is on a very high level so we don't have to go too deep into explaining why we are doing certain things. Maybe he didn't play amazing yesterday but he still can find impact in the rounds.

Now it's just all about developing him as a player, making sure people cannot counter him with certain things and so on. Obviously he is super young as well so we are trying to force him to talk, to say what he want's to do on the team, what moves he wants to do, what he does and doesn't like, stuff like this. It's going to take time to integrate him, but I have no doubt that we will find early success with him.