Astralis took down Team Spirit in dominant fashion with two blowout maps giving them the semifinals berth over their Russian rivals. The team’s Swedish AWPer Love “phzy” Smidebrant looked to be in stellar form, putting on a show for his home crowd with a chart topping 1.76 rating across the series. Meanwhile Spirit were limited to just 13 rounds across two maps, with Danil “donk” Kryshkovet putting together a mere 21 kills.
Team Rosters – Astralis vs. Spirit – EPL Season 23
| Astralis | Spirit |
|---|---|
| Victor “Staehr” Staehr | Boris “magixx” Vorobyev |
| Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard | Myroslav “zont1x” Plakhotia |
| Rasmus “HooXi” Nielsen | Danil “donk” Kryshkovets |
| Love “phzy” Smidebrant | Dmitriy “sh1ro” Sokolov |
| Gytis “ryu” Glušauskas | Andrey “tN1R” Tatarinovich |
| Casper “ruggah” Due (C) | Sergey “hally” Shavayev (C) |
Match Recap
- Spirit removed Inferno
- Astralis removed Anubis
- Spirit picked Dust2
- Astralis picked Ancient
- Spirit removed Nuke
- Astralis removed Mirage
- Overpass was left over
Dust2 – phzy outclasses Spirit – 13-6
The first round of the series was a perfect teaser of what was about to follow across the series. Spirit climbed up A short, and made it all the way to the bombsite, but were simply unable to kill phzy, despite the sniper reloading his USP-S while stood in the open in front of multiple Spirit players. That netted the Swede three headshots, and his team four rounds on the trot.
Spirit hoped to stem the bleeding with a timeout, but phzy used his AWP to eliminate three of them on short, continuing Astralis’ streak. donk finaly put a stop to his roll in round eight, with a well placed AK bullet. But Astralis had the economy to bankroll his AWPs for a few more rounds. And round after round the sniper found multiple targets, giving Astralis a massive 10-2 lead in the half.
Moving to the T-side, phzy continued his charge, taking donk and zont1x down in the pistol. SMGs finally gave Spirit a bit of breathing room, as they put five rounds on the board. But a double-AWP setup was countered by a fast short play, giving Astralis matchpoint. As Jason “moses” O’Toole put it on the broadcast, Astralis put together a “comprehensive performance from start to finish” to close the map out 12-6.
Ancient – jabbi joins the party – 13-7
A B-fake from Astralis gave Ryu the perfect chance to plant the bomb on B, with the Lithuanian eventually winning out in the clutch. While Astralis did walk into the stack in the forcebuy, the SMGs simply mopped Spirit up, giving them an early headstart. Spirit’s gun round nearly put the stops on Astralis’ roll, but jabbi chose that moment to pull off a brilliant 1v3 clutch to keep the streak alive.
With donk missing from the server, Spirit simply had no answer to Astralis’ individuals, and they once again took seven in a row. And the half closed soon after 9-3. Even when they switched over to the CT side, Astralis kept their momentum up, quickly putting up an 11-3 lead. While Spirit did find a couple more rounds through the half, their deficit was simply too large to overcome, and Astralis closed the map out 13-7 with a HooXi triple kill.
Series Statistics – Astralis vs. Spirit – ESL Pro League Season 23
| Players | Kills | Assists | Deaths | ADR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AST phzy | 41 | 13 | 20 | 99.8 |
| AST jabbi | 31 | 13 | 22 | 76.9 |
| AST ryu | 29 | 5 | 17 | 75.6 |
| SPR tN1r | 27 | 7 | 26 | 72.4 |
| SPR sh1ro | 26 | 8 | 30 | 62.1 |
| AST Staehr | 24 | 19 | 26 | 82.6 |
| AST HooXi | 21 | 17 | 25 | 69.9 |
| SPR donk | 21 | 8 | 34 | 68.5 |
| SPR magixx | 20 | 9 | 28 | 53.8 |
| SPR zont1x | 18 | 9 | 30 | 58.3 |
