“I can’t say there was a lot of panic,” Boris “magixx” Vorobiev said about stopping Vitality’s nine round comeback on Dust2 in the post-match interview, “we weren’t focused on ending the game, we just needed to play a single round properly,” which Spirit did in the last round of regulation on the decider map to secure their first ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe victory. “NiP will be the hardest, lately they’ve been insanely good,” magixx added in regards to Spirit’s upcoming matches in the round robin group stage, which will also include bouts against Complexity, FaZe, mousesports and Astralis.
Vitality came into the fixture with a 1-0 record after defeating NiP while Spirit were down 0-1 after a loss to fnatic. The match started on Mirage, Spirit’s map pick, but it was Vitality who were able to take it in a fairly straightforward fashion, 16-11, with youngsters Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and Kévin “misutaaa” Rabier leading the charge.
mir and sdy were a big part of Spirit’s success on Inferno
Dan “apEX” Madesclaire‘s men were all set to seal the deal on their own map pick, Inferno, winning the Terrorist side 9-6 and furthering their lead to 13-6 early on in the second half, but they let their lead slip as Spirit clawed their way back with heavy presence towards the B site to win four late rounds when down 11-15. Having pushed the map to overtime, the CIS squad then carried their momentum over to secure a 19-16 scoreline.
Vitality fell behind early on as they lost nine out of the first ten rounds on the attacking side of Dust2, the decider map, planting the bomb just three times in a 4-11 half. The French team won a crucial CT-side pistol round to stay alive, but lost the even more important anti-forcebuy round, allowing Spirit to further their lead and take control of the economy. Vitality put together major a comeback effort winning nine rounds in a row when up against Spirit‘s match point, but faltered in the last round, giving up the map 14-16.
