Last reviewed: August 28, 2026
Inner Circle entered their BLAST Open Porto 2026 opener as a No. 34-ranked side facing a Vitality roster built around ZywOo, ropz, flameZ and apEX. They left having swept it 2-0, and in-game leader Viktor “onic” Babii credited the win less to tactics than to composure his team found exactly when the series threatened to slip away.
A comeback built on one wild sequence
Inner Circle took Anubis 13-8, then found themselves down 7-12 on Vitality’s Cache pick — one round from being sent to a decider. They won five straight to force overtime and closed it out 16-13. The turning point included an accidental tactics call: onic, forgetting Inner Circle had already used their pauses, tried to call a timeout that didn’t exist, and instead called a fast round with the freeze time running out. Vitality weren’t ready for the sudden tempo change, Inner Circle converted, and onic said the moment helped shift the atmosphere inside the team heading into the rest of the comeback.
Vitality weren’t at full strength, but that only explains so much
Justinas “jL” Lekavicius was standing in for William “mezii” Merriman, who is on paternity leave, and ZywOo had one of his worst CS2 series on record, finishing at a 0.78 rating after starting Anubis 0-7. jL finished his first official at 0.88. Even accounting for that, Inner Circle deserve credit beyond an opponent having an off day — they controlled long stretches of Anubis outright and refused to hand Vitality the deciding round once Cache reached its most dangerous point. Arseniy “cptkurtka023” Derevinskiy led all players with 43 kills and a 1.58 rating, with Daniil “headtr1ck” Valitov adding a 1.37 rating.
Part of a broader run, not an isolated shock
Inner Circle arrived in Copenhagen off a title at Digital Crusade Super DraculaN Season 1, where they beat Acend 3-1 in the final after recovering from an early group-stage loss, and a clean qualifying run through RES Showdown 4 Europe. onic pointed to that stretch — including overtime wins over 9INE and Sashi during the DraculaN run — as evidence his team had already learned how to close out close series before facing Vitality on the bigger stage.
Staying grounded despite the result
onic was careful not to overstate the moment, framing BLAST Open Porto as an opportunity for a young roster to gain experience against tier-one opposition rather than a signal to change approach. He did allow himself one bold marker for where he thinks the ceiling is: “with this roster we can be top 10 easy.” HLTV’s live VRS forecast already has Inner Circle projected at No. 18 ahead of their next match, a sharp jump from their pre-event No. 34 ranking.
MOUZ next, with no history to lean on
Inner Circle now face MOUZ in the Group B upper-bracket semi-final, with a playoff spot on the line and no previous meeting between the two rosters on record. Inner Circle have been strongest on Dust2 and Nuke over the past three months and weakest on Ancient, while MOUZ arrive with strong recent form on Nuke, Dust2 and Inferno of their own — making current form and the veto far more useful indicators here than any head-to-head history.