Falcons faced a tough day at IEM Cologne 2025, falling to The MongolZ and dropping to the lower bracket. Nikola “NiKo” Kovač opened up about his own struggles during the match and the team’s new dynamics with the recent roster changes. Let’s break down what NiKo had to say about the match and his role adjustments.
On the second day of the event, Falcons lost to The MongolZ, a team fresh off being runners-up at the Austin Major. While newcomer Maxim “kyousuke” Lukin showed promise with solid individual plays, NiKo and Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov couldn’t quite find their rhythm, ending with ratings below 0.8 for the series.
NiKo admitted in a post-match interview that he felt good coming into the event, so his underperformance was a bit surprising. “It felt like they were the ones setting the pace,” he said. “They were controlling the map much better than us, and it felt like they had good reads. I also played badly. Don’t really know why, I felt really good, actually, coming into the event, so maybe just an off-day.” Oof, we’ve all had those, right?
Adjusting to a new lineup is never simple, and NiKo touched on that too. “Both yes and no,” he explained when asked if it was growing pains. “We went into this event very confident with good preparation, but games like this happen and you understand you need more time. I’m not really sure what exactly went wrong, is it the time, is it the practice? I’m just disappointed we couldn’t really bring up the pace. That was the biggest disappointment from my side.” Tough words from a pro, but also honest.
One interesting point was NiKo’s role shift on the team. To give more room for kyousuke, NiKo took on more passive positions on the Terrorist side, like holding Upper Dark on Dust2. “I never really played anything else but short control,” he admitted. “I definitely need more time, and those positions require the team to function well so I can enable myself. It was a learning experience.” He seemed optimistic though, saying, “I’m pretty happy that I went back to these kinds of roles. I think I can be very good at them. I don’t really wanna go into too deep into this game because I felt really good coming into this event. I will say this is an off-game and focus on tomorrow.”
As for kyousuke, NiKo had nothing but praise. “He is a killing machine, for sure. People really see what he can bring to the team. I’m very positively surprised by how mature he is in the game, we don’t really need to spend much time on his rotations or communication. He understands the game on a very high level, and on top of that he’s just killing everyone. He kept us alive on CT side on Dust2 as well. He’s an great kid and hopefully, we can grow as a team to enable him to keep playing like this. We’ll see, but we’re gonna see big things from this kid.”
You can catch the full interview with NiKo below to get all the details straight from the man himself.
Falcons will need to shake off this rough start and regroup if they want to make a deeper run in the tournament. NiKo’s honesty about his off-day and the team’s need for more time to gel shows they’re aware of the challenges ahead. Can they bounce back?
