G2 embarrass Spirit 13-1 on Ancient to secure BLAST London playoff berth
Disjointed play and sloppy Counter-Strike saw the Cologne champions miss out on an arena berth.

G2 are through to the quarter-finals of BLAST Open London after reverse-sweeping a lackluster Spirit in the final match of the group stage, recovering from a narrow loss on Mirage (11-13) with wins on Dust2 (16-13) and Ancient (13-1).
It will be the first arena appearance for G2 since March and since Nemanja "huNter-" Kovač took over leadership duties during the off-season, with the Bosnian in good spirits when talking to the analyst desk after the match.
"We changed a lot of players in the last six months, even TaZ got a chance to play," he laughed. "It wasn't easy and it's still not easy, but it feels really good because we've been working really hard lately since we got new players during the summer break.
"A lot of hard work paid off, for now at least, we are improving from event to event. Of course we could have done better at some events, but for now I'm really happy with the progress and I'm happy that it's going this way."
Spirit drew first blood in the series after G2 abused B early on Mirage for a 5-2 lead, with Danil "donk" Kryshkovets and Dmitry "sh1ro" Sokolov combining to win out the half for their side before the Russian phenom took over in the second half.
G2 won the pistol and briefly took the lead, but were at the behest of phenomenal multi-fragging by donk, who opened up bombsites single-handedly, bailed Spirit out of a few disadvantages, and combined with Myroslav "zont1x" Plakhotia to recover a 3v5 in round 24 to lock in a narrow victory.
A far better start to Dust2 saw G2 up 6-0 before Spirit got a look in, and that lead was soon extended to 8-2 as sloppy mistakes, misplays, and missed grenades started stacking up for the Russian team.
A slight recovery at the end of the half did little to help Spirit after Nikita "HeavyGod" Martynenko won a 1v3 clutch to grab G2 their fourth pistol, and a subsequent conversion had them up 10-4 with Spirit visibly out of it and looking ready to throw in the towel. A late rally, again powered by individual heroics by donk and a few multi-kills by zont1x and Leonid "chopper" Vishnyakov, saw Spirit take back control, but it was not a confident recovery as mistakes continued to plague the team and frustration was evident on both sides of the server.
sAw rallies the troops with timeout
The turning point for G2 came at 10-9, when Eetu "sAw" Saha gave his team a reality check during a timeout.
"Guys, I don't know if your 'W' key is frozen or something, but we should play the game, no?" he said. After hearing assent from his team, he added: "Okay, can we fuck them now?"
Matúš "MATYS" Šimko came out of that timeout inspired, finding several impactful multi-kills on Catwalk and out Middle to revive G2 in overtime. Spirit looked checked out, both on camera and on the server, and it showed as G2 closed out Dust2 before stomping through the Ancient decider.
A single, triple kill round by zont1x is all that separated Spirit from losing the map 0-13, with G2 dominating en route to securing their LAN berth.
The end for zont1x?
Reports and rumors pointed to zont1x being out of Spirit after Esports World Cup with Andrey "tN1R" Tatarinovich set to replace him, but the team went into BLAST Open London with the same lineup.
Excellence from sh1ro and donk wasn't enough to net the team a playoff berth at the first point of asking against FURIA, but it seemed out of the question that the Cologne and BLAST Bounty Season 2 champions would miss out on the LAN stage entirely in what was likely their last ride.
It is the reality we live in now, however, with Spirit looking disjointed for large parts of the series and donk's best efforts not enough to make up for the number of sloppy errors made by the team ranked first in the world on the VRS. Whether this was truly zont1x's last ride in Spirit is left to be seen, but there is no doubt that if it was, this is not the way he wanted to go out.
More highights from G2 vs. Spirit:
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HeavyGod bags 4k and 1v3 clutch to win G2 their fourth pistol
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G2 convert Dust2 in OT after Spirit's sloppy mistakes stack up
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G2 happy to make it to bed by midnight thanks to Ancient speedrun
![]() Spirit |
K - D | Swing | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63 - 49 | +2.49% | 99.1 | 73.1% | 1.32 | |
| 38 - 49 | -0.81% | 69.4 | 71.6% | 0.94 | |
| 44 - 41 | -2.02% | 65.7 | 59.7% | 0.93 | |
| 36 - 50 | -2.10% | 67.3 | 64.2% | 0.79 | |
| 29 - 48 | -3.74% | 52.0 | 65.7% | 0.70 |
G2 |
K - D | Swing | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 56 - 37 | +3.82% | 81.6 | 79.1% | 1.39 | |
| 54 - 47 | +0.86% | 85.8 | 73.1% | 1.20 | |
| 44 - 43 | +0.54% | 79.5 | 74.6% | 1.10 | |
| 42 - 44 | +0.21% | 76.9 | 76.1% | 1.01 | |
| 40 - 39 | +0.75% | 60.3 | 68.7% | 1.00 |
BLAST Open London 2025






Eetu 'sAw' Saha







Mareks 'YEKINDAR' Gaļinskis
Danil 'molodoy' Golubenko



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