Vitality and MOUZ won their ESL Pro League Season 24 semi-finals on October 10, setting up a grand final between the two teams, according to HLTV's reports on both series. Vitality recovered from losing the opening map to beat Aurora, while MOUZ edged Spirit across three maps (Dust2 13-7, Mirage 9-13, Nuke 13-11).
Vitality recover against Aurora
Aurora took the first map, Anubis, behind AWPer Özgür "woxic" Eker, whom HLTV credited with a 3.13 rating on the CT side. Neither team pulled clear in the first half as the sides traded three-round streaks, and Ismailcan "XANTARES" Dörtkardeş and woxic halted two Vitality runs with individual plays.
The series turned on Cache. Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut, quiet on Anubis, posted a 2.36 rating on the map, his highest ever on Cache according to HLTV, and Aurora won only four rounds on defense despite XANTARES finishing 15-6. Aurora converted a 2v4 in a pistol round and added two more rounds to cut the deficit to one, but Vitality went on a 5-0 run once their economy recovered and forced a decider.
Vitality led Mirage 7-1 before Aurora answered with three straight rounds from a double-AWP setup. Aurora strung together more rounds while facing series point, but a ZywOo triple kill in the 21st round ended the comeback. ZywOo finished with a series-high 1.44 rating. HLTV also reported that Dan "apEX" Madesclaire is to step down temporarily from Vitality's roster for PGL Masters Bucharest.
MOUZ edge Spirit on Nuke
On Spirit's pick of Dust2, Spirit won and converted the pistol round but fell 2-8 behind before stringing together five rounds. MOUZ won a key half-buy after an overpeek into Lower by Danil "donk" Kryshkovets, and Ádám "torzsi" Torzsás finished the map with a post-plant triple kill.
Spirit levelled the series on Mirage, where donk topped his team's scoreboard with 19 kills and closed the map with a 1v2 clutch. HLTV otherwise described donk's series as unusually quiet.
Spirit won the pistol round on Nuke as well but could not turn it into a lead, and MOUZ took a 7-5 half behind 17 kills from Oldřich "PR" Nový. Clutches from Andrey "tN1R" Tatarinovich and Myroslav "zont1x" Plakhotia brought Spirit back into the map, but PR finished on 27 kills and Lotan "Spinx" Giladi landed a late double kill as MOUZ closed it out 13-11.
This win will give us a lot of confidence. We are a new team, so I don't think it's going to be the same [as in 2025] against Vitality.
HLTV said the result put MOUZ into their third grand final of the season. Spirit and Aurora dropped into the third-place decider.
