Tonight the finals of IEM Katowice 2024, the first major Counter-Strike tournament this year, took place in the Polish city of Katowice.. In the match for the championship cup and a prize of $400 thousand, the team competed with the Russian-Ukrainian squad of the Serbian organization Team Spirit and the European squad of the American organization Faze Clan.
Team Spirit's path to the final turned out to be very long, but the team passed it quite easily, losing only one map the entire time – all other matches ended with a score of 2:0. The journey began with the qualifying stage, where the team defeated Apex and The Mongolz. In the group stage, Team Spirit fought with Navi (which, in fact, was able to take one map), as well as Complexity, and in the final of the group stage, the “spirits” met with their current rivals – Faze Clan, whom they also surpassed and thereby secured their place straight into the semi-finals. There, Team Spirit's opponent was Team Falcons, with whom there were no problems.
Team Spirit's CS2 team includes captain Leonid “chopper” Vishnyakov, sniper Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov and rifflers Boris “magixx” Vorobyov, Miroslav “zont1x” Plahot and Danil “donk” Kryshkovets. The latter is the main star of this lineup, becoming famous for his very loud shouts during matches, which are designed to demoralize opponents and encourage teammates.
In turn, the Faze Clan includes the most experienced captain Finn “karrigan” Andersen, sniper Helvijs “broky” Saukants and rifflers Håvard Nygaard, Robin “ropz” Kohl ) and David “frozen” Chernyansky (David Čerňanský).
The finals of IEM Katowice are held in the Bo5 format, that is, up to three victories of one of the teams. Today's battles took place on the maps Nuke, Mirage and Overpass – the remaining two maps were not needed. The first ended with a score of 13:9, the second – 13:11, and in the third, Team Spirit completely defeated their rivals with a score of 13:3.
Image source: HLTV
17-year-old Russian Danil “Donk” Kryshkovets was recognized as the best player of the match and the entire tournament.. In today's match, he scored 82 game kills, while dying only 40 times, and his rating was a staggering 1.93 (Rating 2.0). And for the entire tournament his rating was 1.7, which is an absolute record for competitions of this level. At the post-match conference, when asked by a 3DNews correspondent whether the fallen popularity was putting pressure on him, Donk replied that he was not under pressure, and his good play was due not so much to himself, but to the whole team.
As the winner, Team Spirit received a massive champion trophy, $400 thousand in prize money, and the right to participate in IEM Cologne 2024, BLAST Premier World Final and Esports World Cup 2024. Second place team Faze Clan received $180 thousand.