Spirit beat The MongolZ to make EPL S21 playoffs with 3-0 record

donk finished his run through the Swiss stage with a 1.74 rating in six maps.

Spirit beat The MongolZ 2-0 on Anubis (13-6) and Dust2 (13-11) to qualify for the ESL Pro League Season 21 playoffs.

The squad led by Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov put Stage 2 of the tournament in Sweden behind them with a clean record, winning three matches against TYLOO, SAW, and The MongolZ without dropping a map.

Spirit, who came from a second-place finish at IEM Katowice and lifted the first ever BLAST Bounty trophy, have secured a top-eight finish in Stockholm and continued their good run of form with a strong showing in the group stage.

Date	Matches
ESL Pro League Season 21
07/03/2025	Spirit Finished 2:0 TYLOO	Match
08/03/2025	Spirit Finished 2:0 SAW	Match
09/03/2025	Spirit Finished 2:0 The MongolZ	Match

The MongolZ went with an unexpected Anubis pick — a map they were good at in 2024 but have played, and won, just once in 2025 against none other than the world's premier Anubis team, Eternal Fire.

"Objectively, it's our worst map if you just open the stats," Myroslav "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia told Freya "⁠Freya⁠" Spiers after the map. "We were waiting for Mirage, actually, but they chose Anubis because statistically we're not very good on it, but it didn't work out for them."

Garidmagnai "⁠bLitz⁠" Byambasuren and his men could not have started off better, with a 3-0 on the attacking side, but strong holds by Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov, Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets, and chopper on the B site gave Spirit a 7-5 halftime lead on the T-sided map.

After the switch, there was nothing The MongolZ could do to salvage their pick as donk went 13-3 with 186.3 ADR in the seven rounds it took to put the map to rest.

Dust2, a map the two teams played against each other for the first time on, was a much closer affair. "They outcalled us at some point on the second half, and it was hard," zont1x said, "but in the end, we won."

In part, it was due to one of Boris "⁠magixx⁠" Vorobiev's occasional pop-off games, as he tallied a 1.58 rating in the 13-11 victory, with donk getting some crucial kills with the secondary AWP late on the CT side to avoid going to overtime.

The number one seed in Stockholm will now get a bit of rest before they start to get ready for the playoffs. "We'll have one day off, and then we'll play praccs and review our games and everything like that," zont1x concluded.