Despite being ranked 16th in the world for Counter-Strike 2, the team PARIVISION managed to win the BLAST Bounty Season 1 championship. Their victory has led many to believe that the coach of Team Spirit, Sergey “hally” Shavaev, is the main reason for that team’s struggles.
This was the first event for PARIVISION with their new player, Ivan “zweih” Gogin. He used to play for Team Spirit. During the online part of the tournament, zweih played very well, with a high rating of 1.61. After that, his team moved into the playoffs where they had to face very strong opponents like Falcons, FURIA, and Spirit.
Team Spirit also had a new lineup for this event. Besides their loss to PARIVISION, they had other difficulties during the tournament. These problems seem to show that zweih was blamed unfairly for issues when he was on the team.
Wrong Roles for Players
It is fair to say that zweih moved to Team Spirit too quickly. He was a star player for Nemiga and had a great performance at the BLAST Austin Major. However, Nemiga was a tier two team. Moving directly to a top tier one team like Spirit was likely too difficult for him at that time.
This is clear when looking at zweih’s performance on the Counter-Terrorist side. Even though he kept the same positions he had on Nemiga, his rating dropped to 1.00 from 1.13. The situation was worse on the Terrorist side, where his rating fell to 0.92 from 1.15.
On the Terrorist side, zweih’s role actually changed. With Nemiga, he was a “lurker.” This means he stayed back to disrupt the enemy team late in the round or caught players moving around. When he joined Spirit, he was still lurking, but he was forced to be the first player to enter the bomb sites during attacks. This is a very difficult and often thankless job.
Usually, this entry role requires a specialist. For example, the team Vitality trained Shahar “flameZ” Shushan to become excellent at it. But in Spirit, the focus is mostly on the star player donk and his rifle skills. The coach does not pay enough attention to the player doing the hard entry work.
There was hope that things would improve when Boris “magixx” Vorobiev became the in-game leader. To some extent, it did. In the last three months under the old leader, Leonid “chopper” Vishnyakov, the entry score was 53. With magixx, it went up to 67. These numbers show how often a player tries to get the first kill. However, the problem is that the bad role still exists in the team.
The increase in magixx’s score came from trading deaths, not from entering sites. Now, that entry job has been given to Myrsolav “zont1x” Plakhotia. His entry score went up, but his rating on the Terrorist side dropped from 1.05 to 0.84. This is another example of the coach, hally, putting players in roles that do not suit them. Zont1x is famous for not hitting headshots very well, which is very important for an aggressive entry player.
Too Much Reliance on One Player
Alex “Mauisnake” Ellenberg, an analyst, pointed out that Spirit relies too much on their star player, Danil “donk” Kryshkovets. He said that the coach and leader have a unique problem because donk is the best opener in the world. They want to use him all the time, but they have become too dependent on him.
Relying on donk is understandable because he is very effective. However, a better coach would find a way to use the other talented players as well. Spirit has Dmitri “sh1ro” Sokolov, one of the best snipers in the world, and Andrey “tN1R” Tatarinovich, a lurker who could be a star on many other teams. A stronger system would use these players to their full potential instead of forcing everything through donk.
Mauisnake explained that Spirit’s success depends too much on donk playing at an incredible level. The team does not have many backup plans. When they try to play a standard round with map control and a planned attack, it feels like they are holding donk back. Sending him into obvious death is not a good strategy, especially since Spirit does not have the best flashing utility to help him.
Now that we have seen Spirit play with and without chopper, and zweih play with and without Spirit, it is hard not to blame hally. Hally has one of the greatest Counter-Strike players ever and a top sniper, but the team has not reached the dominance of teams like Vitality or NAVI.
As time passes, it looks like the problem is hally’s rigid system. Zweih is thriving at PARIVISION, with his numbers returning to the level he had at Nemiga. Meanwhile, Spirit struggled against a tier-two team called SINNERS and lost to PARIVISION. If Spirit wants to win more trophies and keep their star player happy, they may need to make a change, and hally might be the next person to leave.
