In one of the biggest upsets at the StarLadder Budapest Major, FaZe Clan, a team that was less than a second from being eliminated in Stage 1, eliminated MOUZ in the quarter-finals.
After the game, we caught up with MOUZ star Jimi “Jimpphat” Salo to discuss what went wrong and the future of MOUZ as the crowd happily sang “send them home” despite the presence of hometown favourite Adam “torzsi” Torzsas.
The Big Upset
The series began with FaZe’s map pick of Nuke, a map in which their CT sides have looked shaky throughout their time in Budapest.
However, starting on the T side, FaZe removed a lot of the concerns about their CT, repeatedly blowing away MOUZ with fast hits onto the A site. “They had a mindset to make a lot of direct hits,” Jimpphat told esports.net “we were prepared for that, but we just couldn’t adapt to it.”
Despite the growing predictability of FaZe throughout the half, MOUZ still struggled to adapt. “We had struggles with our rotations,” Jimpphat said, and it was clear to see, FaZe stars like Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken and David “frozen” Cernansky had good fun picking off players as they scrambled to retake the lost bombsite.
9-3 down at the half, MOUZ almost pulled off an incredible comeback on their T side. However, after taking Ramp on a low-buy, MOUZ IGL Ludwig “Brollan” Brolin made the wrong call to go through Heaven to A, playing right into Finn “karrigan” Andersen’s gamble A -stack trap. A round that swung the map back in FaZe’s favour, FaZe then sealed the advantage with a 13-11 final score.
Although they lost the opener, Jimpphat told us that MOUZ had “a lot of momentum” going into Inferno. That momentum, though, quickly faded away. MOUZ’s T side fell completely flat, with Jimpphat describing the map as “checkmate” as FaZe consistently made the right calls on where to fight.
It ended with a dominant 13-2 scoreline for FaZe, leaving Jimpphat perplexed. “No one expected us to go out that way,” he said, later adding: “We choked.”
Hitting the Next Level
MOUZ levelling up to become a true trophy-winning team – like their Dota 2 brethren – has been one of the biggest stories across 2025, and as their final chapter for the year comes to a close, they still haven’t managed to do it.
“Throughout the year, we’ve been really consistent. We always make it to the playoffs. But the missing part was the trophies; we only got one all year, and it wasn’t even a tier one trophy,” Jimpphat told Esports.net.
The young Finn told us “It hurts,” and that he’s “not sure what’s missing,” later commending the team in terms of their “teamwork” despite not having a “supertalent.” He was quick to point out that they’ve beaten all the top teams despite not being a squad “with the most individual talent.”
As Jimpphat ends the interview by saying, “We have shown that we can beat all of these teams, but we still find ourselves choking or not performing when it really matters,” it’s easy to see the flaws in MOUZ’s gameplay. Their 48.8% T-side win rate over the course of 2025 is the second-worst in the top ten, so it could be that MOUZ looks to address their leadership heading into the 2026 season.