Esports World Cup 2025HEROIC hand Spirit first early elimination of 2025
HEROIC's last hurrah with tN1R is extended as they beat the Belarusian's future team at the Esports World Cup.
HEROIC have pulled off a major upset to kick off their Esports World Cup campaign, coming out on top of a Mirage overtime decider against Spirit to eliminate the Russian side and move on to the quarter-finals.
The European side looked down and out after a landslide loss on Ancient but gave Spirit a taste of their own medicine with a dominant Nuke performance, before it came down to a high-octane Mirage where HEROIC showed grit to withstand an impressive Spirit comeback.
They will next face off against the winner of Aurora in the quarter-finals, which will take place on Friday at 19:15 .
| Date | Matches | |
|---|---|---|
| Esports World Cup 2025 | ||
| 22/08/2025 |
16:30
|
Match |
tN1R leads the way to eliminate his future team
The Esports World Cup will go down as Andrey "tN1R" Tatarinovich's final event with HEROIC before he moves on to greener pastures.
The organization shared ahead of the event that the Belarusian had been sold to another team, which HLTV knows from sources to be Spirit themselves, where he's expected to take Myroslav "zont1x" Plakhotia's place.
tN1R held his own against his future team and stepped up on the deciding Mirage as the key cog that drove HEROIC's run for overtime.
But it was far from just the tN1R story. Simon "yxngstxr" Boije played an instrumental role in HEROIC's convincing Nuke victory that equalized the series with two 1v2 clutches and enough impact to earn a staggering +14% Round Swing and 2.09 rating 3.0 for the map.
The Swede also found several crucial plays on Mirage, as did rookie Alimzhan "Alkaren" Bitimbai in his first taste of tier one in his loan stint from Spirit Academy.
Spirit's first major upset loss of the year
Until the second half of the season where they have now won the first two events undefeated, you'd be hard-pressed to say Spirit had had a successful year. However, for all their losses to the likes of Vitality and MOUZ in the first half, they never faltered against lower-tier opposition.
In fact, the HEROIC loss marks their first against a team outside of the absolute elite, with their worst loss so far being one to a Falcons side ranked eighth just before their back-to-back final appearances following the addition of Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov.
It ends the Russian team's run of 10 straight victories of the new season, which saw them conquer IEM Cologne and BLAST Bounty Season 2 on the trot off the back of the addition of Ivan "zweih" Gogin in place of Boris "magixx" Vorobiev.
Now the team looks to HEROIC to end their last dance with tN1R before he can make the transition just in time for BLAST Open London, where the team will hope to return to winning ways with another potential upgrade made in the span of two months.
More HEROIC vs. Spirit highlights
  Spirit |
K - D | Swing | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 59 - 41 | +3.70% | 97.7 | 70.3% | 1.44 | |
| 51 - 40 | -0.16% | 89.1 | 68.8% | 1.21 | |
| 45 - 38 | -1.12% | 80.4 | 73.4% | 1.08 | |
| 34 - 46 | -1.86% | 62.9 | 71.9% | 0.88 | |
| 26 - 42 | -3.38% | 42.6 | 70.3% | 0.72 |
 HEROIC |
K - D | Swing | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 51 - 43 | +3.75% | 77.0 | 70.3% | 1.25 | |
| 50 - 41 | +2.61% | 84.7 | 68.8% | 1.22 | |
| 41 - 43 | -0.72% | 65.7 | 62.5% | 0.91 | |
| 32 - 47 | -1.83% | 63.5 | 59.4% | 0.84 | |
| 33 - 42 | -1.05% | 61.6 | 65.6% | 0.82 |
Dan 'apEX' Madesclaire
Robin 'ropz' Kool
Shahar 'flameZ' Shushan
William 'mezii' Merriman
Tobias 'TOBIZ' Theo
Nikola 'NiKo' Kovač
Damjan 'kyxsan' Stoilkovski
Ádám 'torzsi' Torzsás
Jimi 'Jimpphat' Salo
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