Team Yandex has defeated Team Spirit in the Grand Finals of DreamLeague Season 27 capping off an incredibly impressive performance by the squad.
After a shaky start, Yandex were able to take down Team Spirit 3-1 in the Grand Finals on the afternoon of Dec. 21. Coming back from a single game deficit, the team were able to rally and win three straight to secure there victory.
Image Credit: ESL
As mentioned, things didn’t start out ideally for Team Yandex. A weaker initial draft and another stand-out performance from Team Spirit’s Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk squashed Yandex’s initial start, with none of their carries able to stand up to a dominant performance on Phantom Assassin.
Going back to the drawing board in Game Two, a completely new draft, which gave Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov the unusual Kez pick, confounded Team Spirit. There wasn’ t a single moment of Game Two where Spirit looked like they were in control, and found themselves in a gold and experience deficit the entire match.
Pushed onto the backfoot, but confident it was the Shadow Demon, not the Kez that was the issue in the previous game, the squad found a new problem: The standout performance of Ilya “CHIRA_JUNIOR” Chirtsov.
Chirtsov has been one of the breakout players of the event, and his performances in the group stage have rocketed him from a relative unknown to one of the best mid lakers in the scene overnight. His performance on Tiny in game’s three and four left Denis “Larl” Sigitov looking like the less experienced player, and not the other way round.
In the final match, though, it was Watson who sealed the deal. Spirit played things cautious, and while the kill count showed they’d stopped the mistakes, they just couldn’t stand up to the carry potential of Watson. Beyond that, Arman “Malady” Orazbayev’s Chen was seemingly everywhere on the map, making crucial saves.
Martin “Saksa” Sazdov, who competed as part of Yandex on loan from Tundra Esports commented on the victory on Twitter/X:
“Dreamleague winner here, feels great to win after 3rd and 2nd last 2 tournaments and happy for my teammates for their first tournament win 😁.GG”
Yandex, who just two months ago were winning DreamLeague Division 2, have now won the top flight of the ESL Pro Tour. Their victory bagged them $214,000, a $30,000 club reward, and 3,400 EPT points.
Team Spirit take home $142,500 in prize money, a $25,000 club reward, and 3,000 EPT points.
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Featured Image Credit: ESL
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