Spirit To Rebuild Roster: "The Project's Potential Wasn't Fully Achieved"

Spirit will be rebuilding their roster after DreamHack Open November it was announced on Sunday via their Twitter account. The news comes in the wake of the team’s failure to qualify for the Legends Stage of the ongoing PGL Stockholm Major, having been knocked out of the Challengers Stage with a 2-3 record.

It is unclear as of yet exactly what will happen with the team, or how many changes the organization is looking to make.

The team recently failed to qualify for the Legends Stage of the Major

The current core of Spirit came together in late 2019, and almost immediately began a steady rise through the ranks of world Counter-Strike. They quickly cemented themselves as one of the best teams in their region, placing top-two at the Champions Cup Finals which featured top-20 opposition and included a series win over FURIA, signalling the potential that lay within the roster.

2020 came along and with it more success, one highlight being their SECTOR: MOSTBET victory over a raft of tier-two opposition, but it wasn’t until the middle of the year that they really hit their stride.

A series of top placings at Home Sweet Home cups, a stellar seven-series streak at the ESL One: Road to Rio event, and a playoff run at DreamHack Masters Spring 2020 saw them rise to their then peak ranking of #13 in the world, and it looked like the roster had the ability to kick on to greater heights.

This potential wasn’t quite realised as they hovered around the edge of the top-20 for the rest of 2020, but even during this period they picked up an impressive 3rd place finish at IEM New York CIS outplacing then world #3 Natus Vincere, without finding any real consistency. Early in 2021 they switched out Artem “⁠iDISBALANCE⁠” Egorov for Abdul “⁠degster⁠” Gasanov, and this proved to be the catalyst the team needed to reach the next level.

Their first two tournaments with degster wielding the AWP were roaring successes, winning DreamHack Open January ahead of world #4 BIG whom they also beat 2-1 in the semi-finals, but this only served as a warmup to IEM Katowice. Having comfortably cruised through the play-in they shattered all expectations by reaching top-four at one of the most stacked events of the year, securing wins over three top-10 teams in the process, and only falling to eventual winners Gambit in the semi-finals. This incredible run saw them reach Spirit‘s peak ranking since entering CS:GO, #6 in the world.

The rest of the year did not quite live up to the incredibly high bar Spirit set for themselves in Katowice, and they have since slipped slowly down the rankings. They have still shown themselves to be a dangerous tier-one team, but generally have failed to beat the best of the best, bar a monstrous run at EPIC League CIS that saw them take down both the world #1 and #2, Natus Vincere and Gambit, 2-0.

sdy: “I expected us to do better, but we’re making progress game by game”

Their penultimate series in their unsuccessful run at the PGL Major Stockholm Challengers Stage against Virtus.pro encapsulated the inconsistency of their play since Katowice; they barely turned up for the first map and were comfortably beaten 16-7 on Inferno, but then managed to recover from an 11-5 deficit on the second map of Ancient to earn a decider. In said decider of Overpass they put themselves in the driver’s seat to take the series home, running up to a 14-7 lead, before collapsing towards the end of the game and losing in overtime.

Spirit as an organisation appear committed to CS:GO as the announcement described them to be “entering a rebuilding phase”, suggesting they will be looking to build another roster heading into next year.

The current Spirit lineup is: