MOUZ’s Brollan IGL Gamble Falls Flat at IEM Katowice 2025

MOUZ are out of IEM Katowice 2025, and as just about anyone could have predicted, their gamble to bench their trophy-winning IGL days before the event and play with an inexperienced 16-year-old has in fact not worked out. Crazy, right? Their gamble on Brollan taking up the IGL mantle for the first time in his career has fallen flat at the first hurdle, with MOUZ crashing out of Katowice without a single map win on their record.

Don’t judge Brollan or xelex too harshly

While comfortably losing to GamerLegion and Team Liquid isn’t exactly the strongest start to Brollan’s IGL stint, I won’t be judging him too harshly on his IEM Katowice performance. Having a few days of practice and being thrust into an entirely new role while integrating a completely green stand-in isn’t exactly the best basis for success. Even if I’m not sure Brollan IGLing is the answer for MOUZ long-term, this (hopefully) won’t be his best showing in this job.

I’ll say the same for xelex, too. At 16, the MOUZ NXT rookie had just five official maps to his name prior to IEM Katowice 2025, and should never have been placed in a situation where he was required to step up for the main lineup. His performances obviously weren’t the best, but ultimately, they tell us nothing about this player’s future and his potential.

This was sheer silliness from MOUZ

I can only imagine how bad things had become at MOUZ for them to bench siuhy at such short notice before IEM Katowice 2025. Yet, alongside Cologne and the two Majors, Katowice is one of the biggest events in the CS calendar, so everyone involved should have sucked it up for one last tournament and given themselves one more shot at glory together. Replace him with Spinx afterward, sure, but torpedoing your chance at a prestigious event win because of “differing visions for the team’s direction” is sheer silliness.

It doesn’t even particularly matter who forced the hand in the end, whether it was siuhy, MOUZ (the organization), or the other players on the lineup. The end result was a Brollan IGLing disasterclass, and everyone came out the other side of it looking very silly.

If they HAD to pursue Brollan’s IGL debut at IEM Katowice, I’d even rather have seen the decrepit corpse of Xyp9x take part as a stand-in. As their assistant coach, he’s been named as a sub before for MOUZ as recently as BLAST Bounty, so it’s something they’re clearly happy to do if needs be. Yes, he’s completely washed in terms of his mechanics, but he could at least be an experienced voice to help ease Brollan into life as a leader. It’s certainly better than taking the risk of jilting the confidence of a talented young player.

Now, it’s time to return to the drawing board for MOUZ and Brollan. They’ve got a short break before PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025, where they’ll be making their debut with Spinx. There, the pressure will really start to mount as we get to see what this new-look MOUZ is capable of.