zonic says Falcons’ slow starts are wrecking their CS2 games in Beijing

Falcons’ IEM Beijing run ended with a 1-2 loss to Natus Vincere, and coach Danny “zonic” Sørensen said the team’s biggest problem keeps appearing before they can settle into the game. Falcons had beaten HEROIC earlier in the day, then split the series with NAVI by taking Ancient after losing the opener, before dropping Inferno and Mirage.

Sørensen said the issue is not new to the team or to the coaching staff. Falcons, he explained, are already discussing it every day, but the same pattern keeps coming back: when the team starts badly, the players tighten up, lose patience and stop communicating the way they want to.

Bad starts keep breaking Falcons’ structure

The Danish coach described the problem as more than a matter of losing a few opening rounds. In his view, a rough start changes the team’s entire approach. Once the game begins to go against them, Falcons become stressed, the protocols disappear and the players stop trusting the structure they prepared.

That has shown up repeatedly this season, according to Sørensen. He said Falcons often feel comfortable taking an opponent’s map pick, especially because they have recently come in as the higher seed, but the team’s own selections have not been reliable. At the moment, he said, Dust2 is the only map they can truly depend on, and even that is not certain every time.

Sørensen said it is hard to isolate the cause. It could be mental, he suggested, or tied to starting on the T side. What he does know, he said, is that a poor opening tends to put Falcons into “a very bad space” where the team loses its patience and their communication breaks down.

“We get stressed. We don’t communicate properly,” he said, adding that the issue is “a trending factor for us this season, unfortunately.”

That leaves Falcons with a clear problem in both preparation and execution. They have tried several map picks, but the results have not given the coaching staff confidence that the team can reliably lean on anything beyond Dust2. Even that map, Sørensen said, is not a guaranteed solution.

Inferno and Mirage tilted after the first few rounds

The loss to NAVI looked different once Falcons got past Ancient. Sørensen pointed to the earlier win over HEROIC as a reminder that the team can look sharp when the opening phase goes their way. On Ancient, he said Falcons were “very solid” and competitive, even though the map is one of their weaker ones.

That made the next two maps harder to accept. Falcons had lost Ancient 13-5 to NAVI a couple of days earlier, but this time they won it in a close fashion. The problem came on Inferno, where Sørensen said NAVI pressured them well, made the right calls and found the right timing. Falcons still fell behind early, and once that happened, the map slipped away.

The same pattern followed on Mirage. Sørensen said a few early rounds ended up shaping the rest of the game, which he called unacceptable. He did not hide how damaging that felt from the sideline.

“Those few rounds kind of dictated the rest of the entire game,” he said.

He added that the team have to be stronger mentally in those moments. In his view, the problem is not that Falcons are unfamiliar with what needs to change. It is that the response has not been strong enough once the game turns against them.

“It is something that we are addressing and talking about daily.” — Danny “zonic” Sørensen

Even when Falcons start well, their coach said, the first few rounds carry too much weight. If the team gets momentum early, even from winning the first three or four rounds, the half can look very good. But if the opening goes wrong, the collapse can happen quickly and spread through the rest of the map.

That is why Sørensen keeps returning to patience and communication. Falcons, he said, do not simply need to play better rounds; they need to stay composed long enough for their structure to work. Once they rush or panic, the game turns into something much harder to control.

“When we get off to a bad start, it can destroy our entire game.” — Danny “zonic” Sørensen

Returning to Beijing still meant a lot to zonic

Despite the result, Sørensen spoke warmly about being back in Beijing. He said he had been there before as a coach at IEM Beijing 2019, when he won the trophy with Astralis. Seven years later, he said it still felt great to return, even if the outcome this time was very different.

He described Beijing as a beautiful city and said he always enjoys coming to China. Sørensen also praised the local fans, saying they are respectful when teams are out on walks and willing to wait until practice or team time is over before asking for photos or signatures.

“It feels like a second home.” — Danny “zonic” Sørensen

The sentiment stood in contrast to the result, but it also made clear that the frustration is about the performance, not the setting. Falcons left Beijing with another reminder of how quickly early mistakes can snowball, while Sørensen’s comments showed that the team’s next step is not about finding a new excuse. It is about fixing the same opening-round problem that keeps deciding maps before they settle in.