FaZe suffer 13-0 defeat and Vitality brush aside Astralis: BLAST Open Lisbon day one recap

At long last, BLAST Open Lisbon is here.

The second tournament in the BLAST Premier 2025 calendar, it features the greatest teams in Counter-Strike today, and those teams put on some stellar displays for us in day one.

A day the featured overtimes, dominant showings, and even a 13-0 deciding map, let's recap the action.

Spirit blitz The Huns

We kicked off the day with Spirit vs The Huns, a match that resulted in a decisive 2-0 victory for the reigning Major champions.

However, despite the dominant nature of their win, it was actually a player from The Huns that picked up not just the play of the series, but the play of the year so far.

The series began with a 13-8 on Anubis, with the Mongolian team taking the lead at the half thanks to Anubis' abnormally high T side win rate. Still, they were powerless to stop Spirit in the second half, donk went 15-2 to secure his team the map.

Dust2 continued to be the donk show, with the 2024 player of the year going 24-9 and as Spirit took the map 13-4.

Photo: Stephanie Lindgren

MOUZ pick up another win over Falcons

From one 2-0 to another, the second game of the day saw MOUZ record a 2-0 victory over Falcons. The fourth game between the two in recent weeks, the win extends MOUZ's record against Falcons to 3-1.

A far closer series than Spirit vs The Huns, the two maps, Train and Ancient, finished 13-11, 13-10.

Despite a quiet final against Vitality at ESL Pro League Season 21, Jimpphat bounced back in emphatic fashion on Train, recording a 18-13 statline as he pushed the young team towards a lead within the series.

MOUZ continued their momentum into map two, picking up a 9-3 lead from their T half. Falcons fought back on their own T side, but the combined powers of Torzsi and Spinx proved to be too much as they pulled off a combined 22 kills to seal the deal for MOUZ.

Photo: Stephanie Lindgren

Vitality brush aside Astralis with ease

Vitality are the most in-form team in the world right now, and they reaffirmed that with an absolutely crushing victory over Astralis.

An unstoppable force right now, apEX was clearly feeling confident, it didn't take long for his banter to begin.

The first map, Inferno, may have looked like it would be close in the opening five rounds, but Vitality quickly put all of those thoughts to bed with a 9-3 lead on their CT side. The lead meant finishing off the map was a formality, they took the map with a 13-4 scoreline.

Map two, Dust2, was slightly closer, but it still ended 13-6. cadiaN had a torrid time, he ended the map 1-15 as he was powerless to prevent the Vitality players from repeatedly pushing him to the side.

Photo: Stephanie Lindgren

Virtus.pro end close series with 13-0 win

The final game of the day was by far the closest, it was the only series to go all three maps. However, that didn't stop the third map from being a blowout, Virtus.pro stormed Dust2 with a 13-0 win to take the series.

It was FaZe who began the series with a map win, they picked up Anubis 16-12 off the back of a 25-15 performance from frozen and a crisp 1v3 from EliGE.

Virtus.pro then had their turn to win in overtime, pipping FaZe to Ancient with a 16-13 scoreline. The game was even throughout with two 6-6 halves, but it was FL4MUS who was the difference maker thanks to his 30 kills.

Considering how the first two maps went, we all thought that Dust2 could be an all-timer as both teams battled it out for the win, but those thoughts were quickly proven to be false. Virtus.pro dominated the map, clean sweeping their T side and then rounding out the 13-0 with a win on their CT pistol.