Spirit looked like the best team in the world two months ago, but two disastrous tournaments and an early elimination at PGL Masters Bucharest has them in crisis mode - how do they stop the rot?
There’s lots to talk about in Bucharest right now. Nemiga have made their first big event playoffs, and even beat FUT In the quarters, which might have some serious ramifications for them and Astralis.
Vitality are also through to the semis despite playing with jL and having mezii act as their IGL, which is a wonderful look ahead at a post-apEX future that suggest Vitality aren’t going away anytime soon.
But we don’t want to talk about any of that. No, we want to talk about Spirit.
Spirit, prior to taking a month off after BLAST Open Lisbon, looked like the best team in the world. Not just that, but they also looked like a version of Spirit that would be capable of taking the fight to prime Vitality.
Since they’ve returned, though, Spirit have placedf fourth at ESL Pro League Season 24, and have now failed to even make it to the playoffs in Bucharest. To make matters worse, they did so having lost to BETBOOM in their opener, MOUZ (again), and a NAVI team we still refuse to call anything other than dead in the 2-2 game.
The NAVI match was particularly rough. Spirit looked like they just gave up on their two map losses, and the dejected faces were clear to see. They won just five rounds on Cache and Anubis, and the result was donk and sh1ro sat firmly at the bottom of the scoreboard by the end of the series.
That alone makes it clear that this isn’t just an off day, or a rough patch. There’s something very wrong with this team, and it’s hard to tell what it is.
Do they have motivational issues? Are they not getting on as well as they used to? Are their conflicting ideas coming from S0tF1k and hally? Anything is possible, and any one of those three make it virtually impossible for them to actually close out this season the way they started it.
But maybe that isn’t a bad thing when you consider the talent that’s floating around.
Maybe Spirit need a disaster so they address issues within their squad, and sign a seasoned IGL like Boombl4, who is working miracles with BETBOOM, or another player with real firepower like Nemiga’s syph0, who even began this year playing in Spirit’s Academy squad.
Maybe it’s just time for Spirit to undergo a total roster refresh, and maybe that’s okay.
