It was the opening day at the tournament and the first big match for s1mple in a new team. The return did not go smoothly, even if the CS2 legend played quite well.
It is pretty obvious that building synergy within an esports team requires tournament practice. FaZe Clan gains it at Intel Extreme Masters Dallas 2025 (IEM Dallas 2025) — after Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyljev replaced Helvijs "broky" Saukants in the roster.
Their first match was against Team Liquid, and it feels like the issues within FaZe are not gone yet. Unstable performance distinguished the team at their previous event, BLAST Rivals Spring 2025. It’s here again.
FaZe lost 2-0 despite having a good comeback potential. It doesn’t say much about individual the performance of FaZe players: the synergy is lacking. On map 2, s1mple’s stats are just great, but CS2 is a team game.
Team Liquid 2-0 FaZe Clan: IEM Dallas 2025 groups
Team Liquid did not have this problem, though. They demonstrated a very good play on both maps. Building advantage, keeping determination even in harsh rounds, and then winning the match — that was the plan.
Both maps, Ancient and Inferno, finished with 13-0 in favor of Liquid.
Is s1mple really back?
The legend was absent from the pro scene for quite some time, and this match was super important for the community. The result is obviously not what fans hoped for. What about the performance of s1mple in FaZe?
We could see some great moments from the guy, like a 1v1 duel against siuhy on the A side of Inferno. s1mple stopped the opponents from reaching the match point. That was just a delay, though.
Map 1 wasn’t too extraordinary for s1mple. He finished Ancient with -1 K/D and 73.7 ADR.
On Inferno, the performance was much better. S1mple had +8 K/D — and we are talking about 21 kills here, the most among FaZe and the max among all players. As for ADR, the data on stream (119) is different than on hltv (88.0). The fans would believe ESL, but the other number is pretty decent, too.
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All eyes on s1mlpe: A match to set the viewership ceiling
The Team Liquid vs FaZe match was an opening one at IEM Dallas 2025. Both teams have more chances and other challenges ahead. However, the peak views were very impressive. According to Esports Charts, 803,966 people watched the tournament at its peak during this match. The average number of viewers reached 634,544.
For the comparison, only 352,365 viewers at peak watched the FaZe vs FlyQuest match at BLAST Rivals Spring 2025.
The competition of IEM Dallas 2025 continues, and s1mlpe in FaZe Clan can attract even more attention.
After this win, Team Liquid faces MOUZ who defeated BC.Game Esports in their opening match at IEM Dallas 2025. For FaZe, there is no more space for mistakes. They are in the lower bracket, and there's certainly a push for quick adaptation. Losing to BC.Game Esports would be a huge upset for FaZe.
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