FaZe Clan and Team Spirit win IEM Katowice group A

IEM Katowice has been a brutal event so far, with lots of great teams getting eliminated before the group stage even began.

Astralis, BIG, Virtus.pro, FURIA Esports, Complexity, Team Vitality, and Cloud9 are the most important victims so far. Most of them did not get to compete in the current stage of the tournament.

To see teams like Astralis and Vitality failing so hard at such an important CS2 event is incredible. But at least some of the favorites are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

Group A results

In group A of IEM Katowice 2024, FaZe Clan and Team Spirit have already qualified for the playoffs by winning their first two upper bracket matches. Two other teams that will play later today for the 3^rd place in this group are Team Falcons and Natus Vincere. Based on everything we’ve seen so far, it seems that zonic’s team is the favorite.

But, if Na’Vi manage to play a bit better than usual, there’s no reason to think that they can’t qualify. After all, at the individual level, many of the Na’Vi players are better than Falcons’ players.

Coming back to FaZe and Spirit, these two teams played well in their matches. However, FaZe struggled against Eternal Fire and a little bit even against Rebels Gaming. These two teams are much weaker than the ones defeated by Team Spirit.

Chipi Chipi flex by @donk1337 😎#SpiritCS #CS2 #IEMKatowice pic.twitter.com/nkv5lWzAnP

— Team Spirit (@Team__Spirit) February 5, 2024

Spirit had to face Na’Vi in their opening match and played surprisingly well. It seems that donk is finally ready to be as good as m0NESY and other famous youngsters. In this match, in which Spirit won on Ancient (7 – 13) and Mirage (4 – 13) but lost on Anubis (13 – 11), donk’s performance was absolutely masterful. His score was 57 – 36, with an ADR of 100.5.

His teammate, sh1ro, played just as well: 51 – 25. Thanks to these two players, Spirit defeated one of the strongest teams in the race and looked fully capable of winning the entire tournament.

In the second match, played against Complexity, Spirit simply demolished the North American team. Donk’s performance was once again superb: 38 – 22 with an ADR of 105.3. These stats clearly suggest that donk will soon be as feared as the likes of m0NESY, ZywOo, s1mple, and NiKo. Nobody knows how high he can climb but he’s only 17 years old.

In the match between FaZe Clan and Spirit, it’s hard to be optimistic for karrigan’s team. Spirit will likely win it 2 – 1.

Header: ESL