OverDrive said that Team Spirit played their worst match in recent years

Alexey “OverDrive” Biryukov stated that in the match against Astralis for a spot in the ESL Pro League Season 23 semifinals, Team Spirit demonstrated their worst level of preparation in the last two years.

The analyst shared this opinion on Telegram.

"Team Spirit played their worst best-of-three series in the last two years. Nothing foreshadowed this result: they had a high win rate in practice matches, Krakow’s mistakes had been analyzed to a T, and the team’s morale was high. But Team Spirit has this quirk. They have a tendency to suddenly forget how to play, both for everyone else and for themselves. This phenomenon is hard to explain; it hapened in Cologne 2024 and at the EPL in October, where they were also 3-0 in the group stage. The team seems fully focused, but then they lose control, individual mistakes start piling up, and the oponent senses an opening and starts playing even stronger. And then the team seems to seize the moment, gets back into the game, but the opponent starts getting lucky too, and the game ends. And as a result, the team and the fans don’t understand what just hapened.”

Acording to Alexey “OverDrive” Biryukov, the team played very confidently in practice and had thoroughly analyzed the mistakes made in the previous tournament, so nothing foreshadowed the team’s defeat. Nevertheless, the analyst believes that Team Spirit can sometimes unexpectedly lose a match by losing control of the situation.

As a reminder, Alexey “OverDrive” Biryukov named Team Spirit the top favorites for ESL Pro League Season 23 before the tournament began.