Fissure Playground 2 trophy acts as vindication for Furia’s international experiment

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 22/09/2025

Furia defeated The MongolZ 3-2 in a climactic Grand Final at Fissure Playground 2, as Furia lifted the most significant trophy of their organisational history on Sunday.

The victory justifies Furia’s move away from a purely Brazilian roster, with the addition of young Kazakh, Danil ‘molodoy’ Golubenko and Danil ‘molodoy’ Golubenko to the roster.

At the time, the move drew criticism from certain members of the Brazilian CS community for its move towards international players, as well as drawing scepticism due to veteran IGL Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo’s move towards rifling.

In winning their largest tournament to date, Furia have provided proof of concept for their international experiment, with their rookie AWPer shining in a 1.19-rated HLTV MVP performance at the event.

Furia’s growth leads to Fissure Playground glory

Despite a middling first season of the year, a playoff berth at the BLAST.tv Austin Major proved to be a forewarning of the roster’s potential as the team has burst into contention in the second half of the year.

Despite benefiting from rookie AWPer, molodoy’s skills almost instantly, Furia struggled to get wins against high-level opposition in the first half of the year.

FalleN described molodoy’s explosion into Tier-1 to Esports News UK at BLAST London, stating, “From the get-go, he already has a very good understanding of the game, a very natural feeling, and is very precise with the AWP.”

The second half of the year has seen gradual improvement and greater consistency in their new roster, allowing them to claim those big scalps that put them in contention for Tier-1 trophies.

At BLAST Open London, the roster defeated esports betting sites favourites, Spirit and Mouz, to qualify for the arena event at the OVO Wembley.

The results showed the potential when the roster was working; however, the majority-Brazilian roster was demolished by a sharpshooting G2 in the semi-finals of the event.

That result showed that growth on stage was now a necessity for the roster, which had also failed to win on stage in Austin.

At Fissure, they managed to put all the ingredients of their progress together and deliver on stage, defeating Astralis, Falcons, and The MongolZ in order to claim the trophy.

The next question for Furia is whether that success can lead to more significant trophies when all the top teams are present.

The newfound success of Furia has led to speculation that FalleN’s career might be significantly extended by his move to rifling.

Esports News UK asked FalleN at BLAST London whether the team’s growth could lead to an elongation of his legendary career.

The Brazilian stated, “Doing well in a different role and having the team grow as it is growing, it kind of gives you the question, wouldn’t you want to continue for more?”

Bartô steals the show

FalleN’s dog, Bartô, stole the show at Fissure as the pup was present to watch his dad’s victory at Fissure.

The pup was brought on the stage after the win, basking in the glory as the confetti fell.

Barto was even interviewed by British broadcast talent, Pala ‘Pala’ Gilroy Sen, on stage after the victory.

Bartô declined to comment.

‘Crowd cheating’ incident reignites discourse

Furia’s semi-final victory against Falcons came despite accusations of crowd-cheating from the Belgrade crowd, who were seemingly showing a preference for Falcons’ roster featuring Bosnian, Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovac.

The incident reignited debate about whether enough was being done to combat crowd cheating in arenas, especially regarding Falcons IGL Damjan ‘kyxsan’ Stoilkovski, who appeared to wiggle his crosshair over areas where enemies might be in order to entice the crowd to provide information.

Former Complexity CS General Manager, Graham ‘messioso’ Pitt, took to social media regarding the incident, stating, “Crowd cheating is one thing. Players enticing the crowd into cheating for them by wiggling their crosshair into smokes or walls is significantly worse and should be punished severely.”

X-ray, the feature that allows spectators to see the outlines of players, was eventually removed from the viewing experience at Fissure.

Despite that, online discourse pointed to the crowd using radar knowledge to attempt to provide information instead.

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.

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