G2 topple Spirit in Riyadh to make semi-finals

Exceptional individual excellence and brutal calls on Ancient saw the first battle between donk and m0NESY go the latter's way.

G2 are through to the semi-final of Esports World Cup after securing a convincing 2-1 victory over Spirit, grabbing one-sided wins on Mirage (13-8) and Ancient (13-5) on either side of a narrow loss on Nuke (14-16).

G2 were by far the better team throughout the series and could well have taken it in two maps if not for some errors in post-plants and late rounds on Nuke, unforced mistakes that allowed Spirit to recover from a deficit and snatch away a map win.

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The match had an air of excitement around it as it marked the first time Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov and Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets faced off, a long overdue meeting between the players widely considered by most fans as the top two of 2024.

We were deprived of the opportunity after visa issues meant the Russian sniper missed his team's match against Spirit at BLAST Premier Spring Final, with the Russian team beating G2 with Wiktor "⁠TaZ⁠" Wojtas as a stand-in before going on to win the tournament.

Minus an absurd highlight from m0NESY on Nuke, however, neither player stole the show in the series, with donk in particular having a woeful game and tallying his worst series rating since joining Spirit (0.82).

Instead, it was Mario "⁠malbsMd⁠" Samayoa, Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač, and Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač who led the way to victory for their side, with the team's sheer firepower on full display as they romped to a third map victory to lock in a semi-final spot on Saturday against the winner of Vitality vs. Virtus.pro.

Date	Matches
Esports World Cup 2024
19/07/2024	Vitality 13:30 Virtus.pro	Match
20/07/2024	G2 16:45 Virtus.pro	Match
20/07/2024	MOUZ 20:00 Natus Vincere	Match

G2 chose Mirage to start the series, a map the Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen-led lineup gravitated away from and lost by significant margins on all three occasions they played it in 2024.

However, it was immediately clear that this roster is a whole different beast on it, with their loose defaults and excellent trading obliterating Spirit for much of the first half.

malbsMd and NiKo were both potent in that effort, finding timings and drilling Spirit's members to the wall in an overwhelming 9-3 effort on the T side. Spirit capitalized on a pistol win to close that gap, but once guns came up a second time for G2 and m0NESY shut down an A execute, the map was brought to a swift end.

Nuke began in similar fashion, a pistol win from Spirit giving them little advantage after G2's Deagles ripped them apart in the next round. G2 went up 5-1 before Myroslav "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia and donk found late-round openings to bring their team back into the game, evening the score to 6-6 heading into the side swap.

A vintage 1vs3 clutch from Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski put G2 back in control and they pushed up to double digits, 10-6, only for donk to come alive Outside and begin a late resurgence.

Intense mid-rounds unfolded with early advantages from Spirit being recovered by G2, only for their post-plants to crumble and give the Russian team the round. Spirit couldn't convert upon a 12-11 lead, however, and needed overtime to claim victory, where a resurgent performance from a rather quiet m0NESY wasn't enough for G2 to close the series in two despite an incredible highlight 4K.

Ancient was the playground on which malbsMd stomped his authority over G2 at ESL Pro League and likely played a part in his move to the roster, and he did much the same to Spirit here. He ran rampant in Middle to condition Spirit into fighting hard for it, and exactly when they did, Snax called three back-to-back A site executes that perfectly countered the adjustment and gave G2 a runaway 9-3 lead halftime.

donk had a particularly woeful map and couldn't get much going, sitting up zero kills seven rounds in, a stark contrast to his counterpart in NiKo who looked back to his best throughout the series. Despite it being the first match between m0NESY and donk, the Russian sniper was barely needed and recorded just nine kills on the decider map as his team did the work to close things out.