Team Spirit win The International 12

Team Spirit have become the second team after OG to win The International twice. Their Grand Final against Gaimin Gladiators was a superb Dota 2 masterclass and constituted the 3^rd TI Grand Final that ended with a 3-0 score. Only Team Liquid and Tundra Esports managed to accomplish this feat.

For Dota 2 fans who followed professional tournaments over the past six months, this victory obtained by Spirit was not a surprise. After all, this is the team that won both Riyadh Masters and DreamLeague S21, which were the two biggest events in recent months.

Spirit started the year slowly and failed at all three DPC Majors. But since the second half of July, they’ve been by far the strongest Dota team in the world.

At this point, nobody understands how they do what they do, but it’s clear that it’s working really well. Larl has been fully integrated and his contributions have been substantial. Miposhka continues to demonstrate that his understanding of the game, at least in its current meta, is better than anyone else’s.

The rest of the crew is doing great work as well. Everyone will talk about Yatoro because he’s the carry and possibly one of the best position 1 players of his generation. But the truth is that every single member of Spirit has played phenomenally good in this edition of The International.

TEAM SPIRIT – THE INTERNATIONAL 12 CHAMPIONS 🏆

The path to victory has always been challenging and demanding. This season, we took on a tremendous responsibility and worked on every aspect of our game. There were failures and difficulties at the beginning, but we never gave up.… pic.twitter.com/J3DQNJa3vk

— Team Spirit (@Team__Spirit) October 30, 2023

How Spirit won the Aegis of Champions again

Spirit started the tournament in group A and finished the stage as the only undefeated competitor. And keep in mind, we’re talking about four best-of-two matches plus a phase two best-of-three match. In 11 games, not one defeat. That was the first sign that Spirit were the favorites to win TI12.

In the playoffs, Spirit won four consecutive matches, but the first two were quite challenging. In fact, they nearly lost against Virtus.pro, and some will argue that VP could have easily won if only their players’ item builds had been better. The score in this match was 2-1.

In the second match, Spirit faced Liquid and struggled to beat them. This was another long series, with one game over 40 minutes and two games over 50 minutes. In the end, Spirit prevailed thanks to some small errors committed by Liquid.

The last two matches, against LGD Gaming and Gamin Gladiators, were absolutely superb. Once again, we were able to watch Spirit’s decision-making in long-duration battles and it was very impressive. The scores were 2-0 and 3-0 respectively.

Header: Valve