ZywOo is the MVP of IEM Rio 2023

Team Vitality won IEM Rio 2023, so it should come as no surprise that their best player and the two-time player of the year won the MVP award.

Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut is a phenomenon and he regularly has excellent stats, regardless of the result of the match. But at IEM Rio 2023, Vitality won a lot of matches thanks to his performance. This can be much better understood when we look at the team’s individual matches and his rank on the server.

Team Vitality’s IEM Rio 2023 matches

Vitality started IEM Rio with a defeat. This was their only loss in the tournament and it definitely made everyone pessimistic about their chances. After all, OG weren’t exactly the strongest team in the race and yet they managed to beat them in overtime (17-19).

ZywOo’s performance in this match was not terrible, but it wasn’t great either. He was the fifth best player on the server, having a K-D score of 23-21 and a rating 2.0 of 1.01.

Vitality played their next match against FaZe Clan and won after struggling on the first map (19-16) and completely crushing their opponent on the second map (16-9). The star of the show was Lotan “Spinx” Giladi, who finished the match with 73 kills and just 34 deaths. ZywOo had 43 kills and was the second-best player on the server.

Next, Vitality took revenge for the upper bracket loss and won against OG after losing the first map. The scores were 16-14 on Mirage, 5-16 on Inferno, and 10-16 on Overpass. This time, ZywOo was by far the best player on the server, ending the confrontation with 72 kills and just 42 deaths.

With this victory, Vitality qualified for the playoffs, where their first match was against BIG. Both maps were highly contested and ZywOo’s 42-31 score made a big difference. Only Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen had the same number of kills. ZywOo was once again one of the best three players on the server.

The semifinal against Cloud9 was by far the hardest match played by Vitality at the tournament. The score was 1-0 in favor of C9 and the second map was a disaster in the first half: 12-3. But Vitality refused to give up and ended up winning, to everyone’s amazement.

This match is the main reason why ZywOo won the MVP award. He was the best player on his team and finished with a K-D score of 67-46.

In the Grand Final against Heroic, ZywOo was not the MVP but he did play his part really well, being the second-best player on the server.

Header: Team Vitality