Spirit came back from 5-11 down on Dust2, to 2-0 their nemesis in 2025.
Falcons came into the series as the favorite, having won all three of their last three meetings against Spirit.
Spirit came in as the 3-0 team, while Falcons struggled to make it past the group stage. Still, Falcons could pick Nuke into them, a weak map for Spirit that they got to avoid.
Falcons’ map pick was a disaster. They took the pistol and conversion to go up 2-0, but lost 4 players, thanks to timely exit kills from Dmitriy ‘sh1ro’ Sokolov.
Then, Spirit came out with a surprise force buy win, with a Daniil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets hero M4. From then on, it was the zweih show.
Zweih “shows how he can [really] play”
Those were Ivan ‘zweih’ Gogin’s words, after he went 18-8 on the CT-side, getting 4 multikills as the A-site player.
This included 4k on the rafters with a saved AK from a prior round. Spirit got a streak of 7 rounds, before Maxim ‘kyousuke’ Lukin responded with some fantastic aim in Yard.
zweih closed out the half 8-4 with an ace, after Spirit pushed lobby. It looked like Falcons might come back, but zweih was too much of a wall.
zweih came into this series as Spirit’s weakest player besides their captain. He left it with the highest Kill-Death Ratio (KDR) of 1.72.
On the T-side, it was Andrey ‘tN1R’ Tatarinovich’s turn to destroy the Falcons. He got a 3.33 rating on the offensive side, with 3 multikills in 5 rounds. It went under the radar of zweih’s overperformance as Spirit blew out Falcons on their own pick 4-13.
Falcons fumble Dust2
“We had higher expectations than this, I thought we can do better,” kyxsan said in the exit interview about Falcons’ 2025.
They had a chance to close out this map, and their year would still be going on. Up 11-5, it looked like a difficult position to lose from.
Falcons were performing with Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovac topping the board for them, while only donk really was firing on Spirit. However, they started to try to abuse zweih’s B site, and that backfired massively.
zweih looked way too comfortable as they repeatedly went into his site. He almost equalled his Nuke CT-side, with a 18-9 half this time.
Falcons did have one opportunity to close out, with NiKo nearly clutching a 1v2, but unable to close it out.
zweih cleaned up Falcons’ B contact play with an insane ace using just one M4A4 magazine.
Spirit win overtime
Falcons gave Spirit no trouble whatsoever in closing out the series. Spirit won all four rounds, starting with a Rene ‘TeSeS’ Madsen whiff in a 1v2. It was not the Dane’s best performance, and it’s difficult to say if he will remain in a Falcons jersey.
Match Statistics
Team Spirit vs Team Falcons | Starladder Budapest Quarter-final
13-4 (Nuke) – zweih | 2.17 rating
16-12 (Dust2) – donk | 1.62 rating
