hally: "Today I couldn’t make up for how players did in micro situations"

Spirit's gameplan went out the window as Vitality condemned hally and company to a 0-3 defeat.

Spirit have been in four grand finals in a row, winning two and losing two but Sergey "⁠hally⁠" Shavaev is still looking for improvement from his young team.

"The way we lost those finals was not good," he told HLTV. "We need to figure out our mental side, first of all."

Their latest final, an 0-3 drubbing at the hands of Vitality, laid bare the fragility of Spirit in a series where they lost all six pistol rounds and star player Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets never got rolling.

Date	Matches
IEM Katowice 2025
09/02/2025	Vitality Finished 3:0 Spirit	Match

"These games require a lot of energy, to be able to come back into the series, and it’s important to know moments when you need to step up your game during best-of-fives," hally explained.

The runner-up in 2024's coach of the year race has time to help his team recover and improve, as Spirit are among a host of teams that opted to skip PGL Cluj-Napoca.

It will be three weeks until they are back in action at ESL Pro League S21 on March 7, giving plenty of runway as Spirit seek to extend their grand final streak to five.

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Editor's note: This interview was conducted with the help of an interpreter before hally's answers were translated at home by HLTV staff.

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A disappointing result, more one sided than we expected, what went wrong today?

Yes, it was an easy victory for them, but I also want to point out it was our fourth consecutive grand final. It’s a high tempo, we won two finals and failed the other two, but the way we lost those finals was not good, both times 0-3 no chance. We need to figure out our mental side, first of all.

Speaking about today’s final, it felt like we spent a lot of energy on the semi-final yesterday. It’s an experience for us to learn how to recover before best-of-five finals like this. These games require a lot of energy, to be able to come back into the series, and it’s important to know moments when you need to step up your game during best-of-fives. We managed to do it on the third map at the end when it was too late.

It seems like, historically, it was an uncomfortable matchup for donk. Statistically, Vitality are his lowest-rated opponent, does it feel like they've figured something out about his play?

I think they outplayed me, first and foremost. Things were going well this tournament and I knew how to set up our game plan in the majority of games, made good calls, tactical pauses, but today I couldn’t make up for how players did in micro situations.

About Vitality, we played three best-of-threes against them. We lost in Dallas, drew some conclusions and then won twice. But today, they prepared well for us and it was tough playing against them. We need to make the right conclusions and use this experience when we approach our next game against them.

I know it's early but are there any learnings you will take to Pro League? Will there be anything special?

Beside this final against Vitality, we had some games, here and at the BLAST Bounty, where we had issues with Anubis. We need to deal with it, work on our structure for Train, and also analyze the material we gathered from this tournament.