After ESL Pro League Season 21, Mathieu ‘ZywOo‘ Herbaut has become the Counter-Strike 2 player with the most MVP awards from HLTV.
Team Vitality defeated MOUZ in the ESL Pro League S21 Grand Finals with a commanding 3-0 record. This was the team’s second trophy of the year, putting them one tournament win away from winning the Intel Grand Slam. Vitality’s flawless victory highlighted ZywOo’s incredible performance.
ZywOo finished ESL Pro League Season 21 with a 1.43 rating, 90 ADR and 1.14 KPRW over the team’s 15 maps. Only two maps were in the red throughout the tournament.
ZywOo Earns 22nd MVP Award, Breaking Record
ZywOo now has the most career HLTV MVP awards after winning one at ESL Pro League S21. This puts him at 22 total medals, including 15 big events.
ZywOo has overtaken the record from Oleksandr ‘s1imple‘ Kostyliev, who has 21 total MVPs, 14 being from big events.
“I wasn’t really thinking about [the MVP award] going into this tournament. I know everyone on this team could pop off in the finals,” ZywOo told HLTV after the victory. “I knew if I just played my A-game and just waited, I thought in the next two or three tournaments I could get it so I wasn’t focused on it.”
For ZywOo, he said he goes into tournaments thinking more with a team mentality rather than focusing on his individual performance.
Still, he couldn’t deny that he was happy to win the award and beat s1imple. But winning won’t stop him from continuing to grind.
“I won’t stop just because I’m one in front of s1mple,” he said. “I will show I can go like 25, 30 MVP. I’ll keep grinding and never stop playing with this confidence.”
ZywOo has now won two MVPs in 2025 after also showing his CS2 prowess at IEM Katowice.
The HLTV MVP leaderboard is now:
- ZywOo – 22 MVPs (15 big event)
- s1mple – 21 MVPs (14 big event)
- device – 19 MVPs (11 big event)
- GeT_RiGhT – 10 MVPs (2 big event)
- kennyS – 10 MVPs (3 big event)