Team Spirit’s CS2 roster needs a refresh, but kyousuke might not be the answer

It was not too long ago that Team Spirit were on top of the world. Crowned Major winners back in December 2024, their names were etched into Counter-Strike history thanks to donk’s brilliance and an absolute lifegame from magixx. Would they swap their win for anything? No, probably not, but it might just have been the worst thing that could’ve happened to them, long-term.

Pre-Major, magixx was seen as being on the chopping block, and few actually expected Team Spirit to emerge victorious. Seeing out the Major and making a roster change was seen as a foregone conclusion, offering them a refresh to come into 2025 firing on all cylinders. It’s clear that winning the Major altered those plans. After all, are you really going to switch things up after winning the Major, much less cut the player who lifegamed to win the thing? No, you give them a season to see if they can kick on even further – obviously.

The start of 2025 was positive, as Team Spirit went on to win BLAST Bounty Season 1. This victory may have been somewhat of a false dawn, with Team Spirit failing to win any event since. A failed attempt at retaining their IEM Katowice title at the hands of Vitality was their last appearance in a Grand Final, and they have been restricted to back-to-back-to-back Semi-Final appearances since. Now, those rumblings of a roster change have reared their head once again, this time arguably louder than ever.

Removing magixx for kyousuke is the stylish choice for Team Spirit, but is it the right one?

So, who goes? Assuming Team Spirit don’t pull off another miracle and win the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025, it certainly looks like we’ll be getting at least one change on the roster, so let’s talk about it. Right now, conventional wisdom suggests it’ll be magixx making way for kyousuke. This would put an end to magixx’s almost six-year association with Team Spirit, trading him in for a shiny new toy from Spirit Academy.

There’s no denying that 17-year-old kyousuke is a bit of a Counter-Strike god, putting up a 1.31 rating over the last three months in Tier 2. You’ve got the potential solution already in your ranks. Perfect, right? For me, the problem comes down to roles. Not to go full “role-cel,” but kyousuke is more of an aggressive player in the vein of donk. Their positions aren’t one-to-one, but there’s enough overlap that it could cause some problems. For obvious reasons, Team Spirit aren’t going to ask donk to give up any positions any time soon. Still, at 17 years old, there’s an argument to be made that kyousuke has plenty of time to learn new positions while putting his own stamp on things, and shouldn’t be locked into any one playstyle so early in his career. But if this adaptation didn’t work, it wouldn’t be pretty.

The natural aggression in kyousuke’s playstyle could be a real double-edged sword for Team Spirit, should he arrive in place of magixx. It would fundamentally alter the balance of the team, even if he were to take magixx’s more passive positions. He would be a little more forceful than magixx is right now, which is high risk, high reward, which Team Spirit already has in spades through donk. Maybe that second aggressive player is exactly what they need right now. After all, even their AWPer in sh1ro is notoriously passive compared to the teams in the top echelons of Counter-Strike right now. Personally, magixx for kyousuke is a change I’d like to see, but I’m not convinced it solves all of their problems at the moment, and even risks creating more.

Team Spirit’s problems may require a change of leadership

Instead of banging the obvious “magixx for kyousuke” drum, I’m going to propose something a little more unconventional. Watching Team Spirit in 2025, it’s obvious that their wins aren’t down to any tactical nuance. Not to oversimplify things, but “donk go kill” is very much a typical strategy for this roster. So when donk struggles, Team Spirit don’t win. In fact, whenever they face a team of Vitality’s quality, who have both the firepower and tactical knowledge to shut down donk and outplay Team Spirit as a whole, they really come unstuck.

Tactically, there needs to be more strings to Team Spirit’s bow, and I’ve seen enough to suggest that in-game leader chopper doesn’t have enough ideas to give donk a team whose tactics are on par with his immense individual firepower. If he did, we’d be seeing an utterly dominant Team Spirit right now, and that is far from the case. Could it be that a change in leadership at the top is required to take Team Spirit back to the pinnacle of Counter-Strike? After six years with chopper on the active lineup, I think it might be so.

So, which Russian-speaking in-game leader could adequately replace chopper and add new tactical depth to Team Spirit? It’s rough out there right now – nobody in their right mind would bring in someone like nafany for chopper, for example. But what if I told you there was a Grand Slam and Major-winning in-game leader who could do the job perfectly, one who has just qualified his team to its first-ever Major? I am, of course, talking about Boombl4.

Boombl4 in for chopper – it just makes sense. As the captain of BetBoom, he has steadily helped the team to climb the Valve Regional Standings, and it’s impossible to objectively judge his rough Cloud9 stint, given the fact that he was playing as a makeshift AWPer. That’s before we get into his glorious NAVI days, which, while a long time ago now, are still a sign of what he could do with a team of stars like Team Spirit. Compared to chopper, I can see that previously mentioned tactical depth going up several levels under the BetBoom IGL. Boombl4 is undeniably a rogue choice if Team Spirit are to make a roster move after the BLAST Austin Major, but I reckon he’s enough of a wildcard that it could just work, should a change in leadership be required.