Team Spirit has taken down Eternal Fire in the quarterfinal of ESL Pro League Season 21 in a tiring game of 3 maps. donk and co. continues their fine form as they find themselves in the semi-finals against the winner of the following match between G2 and MOUZ.
VETO
- Spirit removed Inferno
- Eternal Fire removed Ancient
- Spirit picked Nuke
- Eternal Fire picked Anubis
- Spirit removed Train
- Eternal Fire removed Dust2
- Mirage was left over
Map 1: Nuke; Pick: Spirit; Winner: Spirit
Starting strong, Spirit went 5-0 up before Eternal Fire could get their first round on the defense. The Russian side managed to lose a few rounds, as EF finally managed to draw five rounds to make the match more competitive than it seemed early on. Eternal Fire went 11-5 down as Spirit seemed to be running away with the map. Eternal Fire started winning rounds from the 17th round, which saw the scoreline leveled as the game got pushed to overtime. The first overtime failed to separate both sides, but the second OT saw Spirit run a perfect T side, followed by a clean win on the first round of the CT side, closing their map pick with a 19:15 scoreline.
Map 2: Anubis; Pick: Eternal Fire; Winner: Eternal Fire
A heavily one-sided first half saw Eternal Fire cruise through with a 9-3 lead, sending Spirit to the backfoot right from the get-go as their defense fell completely flat. Given that Anubis is a T-sided map, Eternal Fire took full advantage of it to sail into a massive lead as Spirit got a better grip on the game in the second half. Spirit managed to win 7 rounds before Eternal Fire closed the half, and donk was completely shut down as even though he hit a few good shots, Eternal Fire managed to minimize his impact, sending us to a 3rd map.
Map 3: Mirage; Pick: Decider; Winner: Spirit
An extremely close first half between the teams saw both sides walk away with a 6-6 half, making it a close and exciting affair. While donk managed to find his footing, Eternal Fire’s teamwork helped them go toe to toe, keeping them in the game for the entirety of the first half. The second half saw EF drop the ball completely as Spirit managed to win all but one round as a dominant 13-7 half crashed on the Turkish side. donk, with 50 kills and a rating of 1.12, was the best player in the server across the 3 maps combined that saw Team Spirit book their semi-final spot.
With promising results to show for it, Eternal Fire once again takes an exit from a top tournament after losing out to arguably the best team in the world. While they have managed to improve since the acquisition of jottAAA, they still need to work on several aspects of the game if they want to bring home a tier-1 trophy. As things stand, they take an exit from EPL reaching the quarterfinals while Spirit will be in the semi-finals at their cost.