Team Spirit win the FiReLEAGUE 2022 Global Finals

FiReLEAGUE 2022 Global Finals was a three-day CS:GO event that took place in Barcelona between October 14-16. The venue was Camp Nou, one of the most famous places in the world of football.

FiReLEAGUE 2022 Global Finals offered a pretty substantial prize pool for an A-tier event that lasted just several days: $150.000. The number of participants was eight and the winner received $100.000.

Team Spirit were among the few tier-1 competitors that got invited to the event. Initially, they weren’t even on the list because they were probably regarded as being a bit too strong for this level of competition. But when Team oNe eSports announced that they would no longer participate, Spirit were offered the chance to replace them.

FiReLEAGUE 2022 Global Finals recap

FiReLEAGUE 2022 Global Finals didn’t have a group stage. Instead, the tournament consisted of a single-elimination bracket with four quarterfinals, two semifinals, and a Grand Final. Every match was best-of-three.

In the quarterfinals, the four big favorites won their matches. The only one that struggled was paiN Gaming. The Brazilians encountered a Danish team called MASONIC and needed three maps and a lot of overtime rounds to beat them.

In the other three matches, Imperial defeated Isurus (2-0), Spirit crushed WIN (2-0), and 9z Team had a relatively easy match against MIBR (2-1). Despite losing the second map (16-19), Maximiliano “max” Gonzalez and his crew won the other two maps at decisive scores.

In the semifinals, Imperial, led by Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, were expected to defeat paiN Gaming. After all, a team that recently qualified for IEM Rio Major should be stronger than one that didn’t. But unfortunately for them, paiN were in excellent form and seemed to understand very well how Imperial wanted to play.

The match nearly ended in just two maps. But after a 16-14 score on Overpass, paiN had to play a third (Vertigo), which they won with ease: 16-6.

In the other semifinal, Spirit had no problems against 9z: 16-12 on Dust II and 16-7 on Ancient.

The Grand Final was expected to be extremely one-sided, simply because paiN were perceived to be a relatively weak team. But that wasn’t the case. The Brazilians won the first map (16-12 on Dust II) and looked fully capable of winning the trophy. But on the second and third map, the experience and superior individual talent of Spirit prevailed.

Nuke ended with a score of 8-16 while Vertigo finished with another clear victory for the CIS crew: 10-16. Three members of Team Spirit had a fantastic performance in the Grand Final: Robert “Patsi” Isyanov (+25 K-D, 1.51 rating 2.0), Igor “w0nderful” Zhdanov (+30 / 1.48), and Leonid “chopper” Vishnyakov (+17 / 1.30).

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