Team Falcons is MENA's most notorious team in Rainbow Six Siege. The green roster put the region under the radar at the Gamers8 2022 as they finished in second place after victories over MIBR, TSM, and WYLDE.
With the arrival of BLAST into Rainbow Six Siege's competitive scene, the MENA region was finally given a path to qualify for international competitions. Following the news and after the squad's performance in 2022's Gamers8, fans expected Team Falcons to dominate their home league.
Initially, the team didn't disappoint. An almost flawless run in the MENA League 2023 Stage 1 saw the green falcons qualifying for the BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen, where they finished in 15th - 16th place. Two months later, Team Falcons stole the show once again after defeating G2 Esports and Ninjas in Pyjamas in the Gamers8 2023 as they were knocked out in the semifinals after a 0-2 defeat against the eventual champions Team BDS.
However, the Team Falcons hype train was abruptly stopped in the second split as Geekay Esports' investment in international talent was successful: the team's first-place finish in the MENA League 2023 Stage 2 saw them qualifying for the BLAST R6 Major Atlanta instead of the region's favorites Team Falcons. If that wasn't enough, the blue roster became MENA's first team to play at an international stage after surviving to Atlanta's Phase 2 following victories against the eventual champions w7m esports, Team BDS, and Wolves Esports.
Team Falcons' status in the scene was slightly reestablished in São Paulo, Brazil, after the green roster became the first MENA squad to survive to a Six Invitational group stage. Although it was a good result for a roster made of Six Invitational debutants, it's fair to say an esports organization of the size of Team Falcons aims for more. In an attempt to get the squad back on track, the team signed Hashem "Hashom" Jafri from Geekay Esports and the former MNM Gaming coach and analyst Loïc "Eden" Sennepin.
Despite Team Falcons' best efforts to claim back the team's throne in the MENA League, the green roster finished well behind Geekay Esports, who ended up representing the region at the BLAST R6 Major Manchester. It's then when Team Falcons decided to completely transform the organization's Rainbow Six Siege roster by adding three new players throughout the summer.
First, Team Falcons added the Italian talent Roberto "Robby" Pintarelli to compete in the Esports World Cup 2024 qualifiers. Two months later, the team unveiled the signings of the Kuwaiti twins Abdullah "Dov2hkhiin" Alsaeedi and Abdulrahman "Guardz" Alsaeedi from Onyx Ravens. It's fair to say the changes worked out.
In Stage 2, Team Falcons ran over every team in the MENA League as the roster ended the split with 20 out of 21 points and a round difference of +30. Logically, the team qualified for the BLAST R6 Major Montreal.
In Canada, against all odds, the team reached the tournament's final stage after victories against DarkZero Esports, Team Secret, and the Chiefs in Phase 2. Despite being knocked out by Virtus.pro after back-to-back overtime defeats against the Russians, Team Falcons' run in Montreal was enough to qualify for the Six Invitational 2025.
To understand Team Falcons' progression throughout the season and to know more about the roster changes, SiegeGG interviewed the team's assistant coach Eden.
Why did Team Falcons underperform in Stage 1?
Surprisingly enough, what was expected to be a two-horse race between Team Falcons and Geekay Esports to qualify for the BLAST R6 Major Manchester ended up being slightly different: while Geekay Esports remained on top, Team Falcons finished in fifth place — the team's worst result in the MENA region. Instead, it was Onyx Ravens who almost spoiled Geekay Esports' stage as the Kuwait-majority roster finished in second place, only one point behind the BLAST R6 Major Atlanta quarterfinalists.
"Stage 1 was a combination of two things: university assignments, Okillz, Q6z. and also P9, they had exams during and before Stage 1, they had to work a lot on this, combined with Ramadan, which was at the same month. All this combined means players need to rest, players need to eat also, players need to have time with their families. Sometimes we couldn't scrim more than two, three times a week," the French coach said.
"Ramadan implies that players will wake up to eat in the middle of the night, so they will sleep less. They are exhausted. The time to scrim is usually in the end of the day, but it also clashes with the time they have to eat, so sometimes we were scrimming with an hour downtime in the middle of the second map so players could eat with their families," he added.
"We had a new guy (Hashom) and he couldn't scrim as much as he should have. We can take a new guy and scrim three or four times a week, but you will need two months, three months minimum to be ready for stage one, for chemistry to be here. We had Hashom joining post SI at like not even one month to preparate, if you scrim three or four times a week for four weeks, that's like twelve scrims of three maps each, that's like less than 40 maps scrimmed, that's what professional teams do in one week, not in one month."
All in all, the combination of important university assignments and Ramadan altered Team Falcons' practice schedule, which presumably affected Hashom's adaptation to the team after having played for almost four years for the same core.
Team Falcons summer signings and switch to English comms
Following Team Falcons underwhelming performance in the first stage of the season, the organization decided to make roster changes. However, signing players is always complicated for MENA rosters who also compete in the Saudi eLeague.
For those unaware, the Saudi Arabian competition requires teams to compete with at least three Saudi players. Therefore, adding imports can be a bit difficult sometimes — unless the team has separate squads for each tournament. While the arrival of one player from outside Saudi Arabia shouldn't be an issue, Team Falcons ended up adding three: the Italian Robby and the Kuwaiti twins Dov2hkhiin and Guardz.
This situation forced Team Falcons to compete with a different roster in the Saudi eLeague. For instance, in the Saudi eLeague 2024 grand final, the team competed with Fahad "P9" Ababtain and Mohammed "Madskills" Alghamdi instead of the Kuwaiti duo.
Additionally, Team Falcons commitment in representing the MENA region with players from the region means the addition of imported players may be a last resort. "There's this vision that Team Falcons is here to represent MENA and to be a MENA powerhouse," Eden explained.
Despite the team's situation when it comes to signing players, Team Falcons ended up bringing Robby in. Before joining the green roster, the Italian had competed for Team 86 in Europe's Tier 2. His best result under the organization-less roster was a fourth-place finish at the Malta Cyber Series: VII.
"We started a few trials, he was in the list. I didn't know what to expect, I saw him perform, I watched his game, and he looked like a decent player... but I didn't know how much he could grow. We got in the game and then we discovered the player was efficient, not flooding the comms, insane gunner, and great vision."
With the addition of Robby, the players were forced to switch from Arabic to English coms. Logically, this was a challenge to all the players in the roster who weren't used to communicate in a foreign language. "It was a big question mark, because we didn't know how the players would adapt to it and be as efficient as in their mother tongue."
"JlaD was confident, at the time we had Okillz and P9, they were also confident, so we just decided to take our chance and do trials. It took us half a map in trials to find our pace in English with how much we communicate and how much a player says, after this it was very fluent and efficient in the game."
However, after Team Falcons missed out on the Esports World Cup 2024, the green roster decided to make more tweaks: that's when Dov and Guardz's names came in.
"When we had to make changes, we looked at the market post-EWC and there was some decent options in EU to be honest, but we also had two new talents and fresh guys in Dov and Guardz, that are from the regions and were free agents, so that's why we didn't go for more imports."
"At first I didn't know if it was a good idea to bring two guys and I didn't know that they were twins. I told Madskills that we could trial Guardz and see if that works and then we trial Dov, but he told me that no, that there was no way we could separate them. The first time he told me this I didn't really understand, then the trial day comes, they have the same voice, the same name, and I understood."
"They do everything together outside the game, so in the game they also do everything together. The chemistry is so good," Eden added.
With the second split of the season slowly approaching and with the situation outside the server being completely different, the team had more time to practice, and, therefore, the results in the game improved.
"We started scrimming six maps a day almost every day with one or two days off per week, we trained hard, recreated the chemistry between the players, recreate some strats, change some strats. Players worked super hard to evolve our game plans and our play style; this way, when we came to Stage 2, we weren't fully prepared, but we were in the good path."
Eventually, Team Falcons got back to the top of the MENA League standings as they ended up winning the second stage of the season. In other words, the MENA powerhouse would represent the region at the BLAST R6 Major Montreal. But, how well could they do in Canada?
Team Falcons and Montreal
Considering that teams in the MENA League only play seven maps per stage, it's always hard to know what to expect from them internationally. It gets even harder in Team Falcons' case, a team that competes with two different lineups — one for MENA's top flight and another for the eSaudi League.
Team Falcons' start to the BLAST R6 Major Montreal was slightly shaky. Against ALPHA Team, the MENA League roster kicked off the series with a 7-1 win on Bank, which was followed by a maximum overtime defeat on Kafe. Eventually, they closed out the series with a flawless win on Nighthaven Labs.
Only one day later, Team Falcons clinched a spot to compete in Montreal's Phase 2 after a rock-solid 2-0 win against the Chiefs, including 7-4 and 7-0 victories on Chalet and Border. Overall, Robby had stolen the show with SiegeGG ratings of 1.24 and 1.80 against ALPHA Team and the Chiefs, respectively. By the conclusion of the competition, the Italian averaged the second-highest SiegeGG rating — a 1.25 in 13 maps.
With the team's signings working as expected and after adapting to the LAN environment thanks to the team's successful Phase 1, the MENA League roster surprised everyone with back-to-back victories against DarkZero Esports and Team Secret. All of a sudden, Team Falcons had a real shot at qualifying for the Six Invitational 2025: the players only needed one more win.
When asked about if the team thought about the Six Invitational 2025 after defeating Team Secret, the French assistant coach agreed. "Personally, as a staff, yes, because you always have to look at the big picture, but for the players it wasn't a thing until we faced FaZe Clan in Stage 2."
"We all realized that we had a chance to make the Six Invitational and that we were better than we expected, people were fearing us," he added.
However, the team's performance against FaZe Clan was underwhelming. "It took us a bit of time to take the excitement," Eden explained. "When we played against FaZe Clan, I won't say we didn't play our game because we tried to, but we didn't play well enough."
Eventually, Team Falcons clinched a Six Invitational 2025 spot after defeating the Chiefs the following day. With that victory, the team had also locked a spot to compete at the BLAST R6 Major Montreal Finals. Unfortunately for Team Falcons, Virtus.pro knocked them out after back-to-back overtime victories.
"We had two major problems, we played over aggressive in the end of the rounds because we wanted to close the game and that's not what we should have done against VP, and in the last moments we played too passive which is not very good either against VP. We played two extreme type of game plays in the same game and that's what was mainly a problem for us," Eden added.
Team Falcons and the Six Invitational 2025
Team Falcons will be MENA's only representative at the Six Invitational 2025. The team will start the competition from Group C as they will play against Team BDS, DarkZero Esports, PSG Talon, and Razah Company.
While the group may look like the weakest compared to the rest of groups, especially Group B and Group D, it's hard to know what to expect from, not just Team Falcons, but also PSG Talon and Razah Company.
"In terms of all the performances, if I look at it from a cold point of view, Team BDS should be first and second position should be decided between DarkZero Esports and us," Eden said.
"It can go either way, if we do one small mistake we will easily finish fourth, and that's something that's is a bit scary to me," he concluded.
If you want to stay up-to-date with all the news about Rainbow Six Siege and the Six Invitational 2025, don't forget to bookmark the site and follow us through our social media pages.