MOUZ beat Spirit to punch ticket to PGL Major

Spirit's struggles on Vertigo continued as MOUZ clinched a 2-0 victory.

MOUZ are through to PGL Major Copenhagen after shutting down Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets and Spirit in the second qualifying match of RMR B, exploiting the Russian team's flaws on Vertigo (13-10) before putting a halt to a comeback on Mirage (13-11) to take home the victory.

An emphatic performance from Jimi "⁠Jimpphat⁠" Salo was key to victory in the latter map, with the Finn shining on the defense before combining with Ádám "⁠torzsi⁠" Torzsás and Dorian "⁠xertioN⁠" Berman to power MOUZ to a late recovery in the second half to secure his career-first Major appearance.

"It feels awesome, I'm out of words to be honest," the 17-year-old said with an ear-to-ear smile on his face about qualifying for the Major in a post-match interview. "I'm just really happy we made it 3-0 and we don't have to play anymore, like the 2-1 or 2-2 games, and as you said it's my first Major so I'm really looking forward to that."

Spirit had struggled on Vertigo against Astralis on the first day of the qualifier, with donk in particular having a poor showing, and MOUZ clearly identified that as a weakness they too could exploit as they picked that map to start the series.

The pick paid off as MOUZ jumped out to an early lead on the T side, only for Myroslav "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia's timely plays at A Ramp to break their economy and allow Spirit to tie up the score.

Clutches from Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin and Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov kept the game neck-and-neck as the teams continued to trade blows early into the second half, but donk's absence on the server was clearly felt as Spirit couldn't overwhelm bombsites as normal, and Brollan and Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek stepped up on the CT side to shut Spirit down and go up 1-0 in the series.

MOUZ's excellence continued on Mirage, where they initially looked to be in trouble after going down 1-4 on the defense but quickly recovered once they had guns in hand. There was never a moment for the rest of their CT side that MOUZ looked uncomfortable, constantly dictating the pace of rounds and discarding Spirit's bombsite executes to win seven rounds straight for an 8-4 lead.

We had something cooked," Jimpphat said in regards to MOUZ's game plan on Mirage. "I will not go into specifics, but there was definitely something that we looked into and it was something we really needed to do, because they have really strong individuals in the team. I think it all worked in the end, I'm just really happy that it went our way."

The game plan did end up paying off in the second half, but it took time to implement: Spirit won the pistol and were looking just as comfortable on the CT side as MOUZ had, winning six in a row to take the lead and even replying to MOUZ's first T round win to go up 11-9.

Back-to-back squandered advantages by Spirit completely changed the outcome of the map, however, with Jimpphat stepping up alongside torzsi to convert a crucial 2vs4 that later helped break Spirit's economy at 11-11. MOUZ didn't let off the gas and quickly converted that into victory, 13-11, once again holding donk at bay with a meager 0.91 rating.