Astralis beat Spirit in Lucky's debut

The young Danish AWPer seems to have settled in well with his first tier-one team.

Philip "⁠Lucky⁠" Ewald's debut match ended in success as Astralis battled to a 2-1 victory over Spirit in their inaugural match in ESL Pro League S14. The young AWPer seems to have settled well with the team and contributed with some big clutch moments to help his team to victory.

"I am very happy with what he has done today," Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander said when asked about Lucky's debut with Astralis, in which the new addition averaged a 1.03 rating. The in-game leader went on to provide some insight into what encouraged the organization to sign Lucky, saying "what we could see when we saw his videos was that [...] it looked like he liked to take a lot of initiative, which I think is really important as an AWP player."

Astralis kicked off the series poorly, falling to an 0-5 deficit on Spirit's pick of Dust2 after losing the pistol. Astralis' initial woes with A-site retakes improved as the half went on, allowing them to finish 7-8 moving into their T side, with Lucky winning two key clutches to help give them a chance in the map.

The second half ended up being a simple one for Spirit, particularly once they had won their second-round forcebuy after losing the pistol. They closed the map comfortably 16-11, powered in large part by the stellar 1.75 rating of Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov, who finished the map with 26 kills and 100 ADR.

Inferno was a completely one-sided affair, with Spirit struggling to muster any magic on their T side and falling in a 3-12 half. They seemed to struggle to create enough space when trying to execute onto either site, regularly getting stuck in the chokepoints and cleaned up by the Danish squad. Spirit won their CT pistol to give themselves a glimmer of hope, but Astralis won the first gun round to make the second half a formality, ending the map 16-6.

Spirit would have been hoping for a closer map moving onto Ancient, particularly considering how little Astralis have played the map, but it was not to be. After another solid start for the Russians saw them battle to a 6-3 lead, things began to slip away as they couldn't find a way to hold the B site, losing six straight rounds to end the half 9-6 down. Astralis again made a formality of the second half, winning the pistol and only allowing Spirit one round in the second half as the map ended 16-7, ending the series 2-1 to the Danes.

With the first round of Group A done and dusted, here are the current standings of the group with four more rounds of play to go: