Team Spirit Captain Speaks Out After Being Eliminated from ESL One Birmingham 2026

Nikita “Panto” Balaganin stated that on the first map of their match against Xtreme Gaming at ESL One Birmingham 2026, his team secured a relatively easy victory, but losses on the second and third maps led to their elimination from the tournament.

The Team Spirit captain shared this view on Twitch.

“On the first map, our strategies were better; we played well. Maybe we started off poorly, but then we bought a couple of Aghanims. More Aghanims mean a better chance of winning. We bought three and won.

On the second map, I think we had a decent draft. When we got into one bad fight near Roshan, the game got tough. They just ran at us; they had Brewmaster, Spirit Breaker, and Spectre. They could easily kill Apparatus and Sniper. So the game got tough if we died even once. We needed to take everything—Roshan, the Tormentor, kills, all the towers. Then we could have won.

The third map was more interesting. I feel like we could have played better in the early game. Xtreme got a lot from every lane. Sand King was huge in the mid lane; he was clearing waves. I died once in the top lane, and they farmed. In the bottom lane, Beastmaster got a double kill. But we dragged the game out well; our heroes were good in team fights. The game came down to team fights and who would make more mistakes.

Once we went in and messed up, another time Beastmaster jumped on a rune and died. The game went back and forth, but the final fight didn’t go our way. Xtreme caught us first, caught us off guard. Perhaps if we had been more focused on the possibility of them coming, we would have been better prepared and could have won. We need to hold our lanes better.

Thank you for your support. On the last map, we gave it our all and played with heart. We tried our best, but in the end, we were the weaker team. I’m sorry it turned out this way. We’ll try to do better at the next tournament.”

According to Nikita “Panto” Balaganin, his team had a successful draft on the second map, but they were unable to secure the win due to a single lost fight, which allowed their opponents to take control of the game. The Team Spirit captain also believes his team had a decent chance of winning the third map, but the opponents were able to demonstrate more confident play in the lanes. Summing up, the esports player noted that his team needs to learn to win more lanes, and also thanked the fans for their support, expressing regret over the unsatisfactory result.

As a reminder, earlier, Wang “Ame” Chunyi commented on Xtreme Gaming’s victory in the match against Team Spirit.