Spirit ready for Major after 2-1 win
The Russian team edged out Anonymo.
Sunday was the last day of qualification for the Antwerp Major next month. Six teams fought for three tickets. In the first match of the day, Spirit was tasked with the job of eliminating Anonymo in order to qualify. Anonymo has had one of the hardest ways towards the Major with matches against G2, Players, Entropiq, and ENCE. With victories against G2 and Entropiq, Anonymo had already surpassed any expectations in the tournament.
Spirit on the other hand had seen a much easier way to the all-or-nothing game against the Poles. ENCE, ASG, SINNERS, and Endpoint had been the route for the CIS team.
Spirit picked Vertigo as the first map. Here they faced tough opposition, especially from Arek 'Vegi' Nawojski, who dropped 35 kills during the 30 rounds in the heights. It was not enough though to prevent Spirit from winning 16-14.
The potential last map of the series was Mirage. A safe haven for Anonymo, who has the map as their best, while Spirit has their lowest win rate on the map. On paper a dream scenario for the Poles. But today it was closer to a nightmare. In-game leader Oskar "oskarish" Stenborowski could not find the right solutions on the T-side, which left Anonymo trailing 11-4 at the break.
But then everything changed. Anonymo’s CT side was much much better. Very quickly the Poles had turned the match upside down and took the lead at 13-12 meanwhile the players of Spirit were shaking their heads in disbelief. They had been five rounds away from making it to the Major. Now they had to go to Nuke to get it all settled.
Team Spirit started brilliantly on their T-side winning the first half 13-2 giving themselves a huge chance to qualify. An ace from degster at the start of the second half took away all hope for a comeback from Anonymo, who could not force the comeback and had to deal with the fact, that Team Spirit will be the ones to make it to Antwerp after a superb showing on Nuke.
Team Spirit - Anonymo 2-1 | PGL Major Antwerp 2022 Europe RMR B
16-14 (Vertigo) | 
Vegi - 1.82 Rating / 35-19 K-D / 119.9 ADR
12-16 (Mirage) | 
s1ren - 1.33 Rating / 23-14 K-D / 71.4 ADR
16-7 (Nuke) | patsi - 1.49 Rating / 19-11 K-D / 85.6 ADR
MVP: Arek 'Vegi' Nawojski - 1.23 Rating / 67-61 K-D / 96.8 ADR
