Esports World Cup Dota 2 grand final: Spirit shoot down Falcons

Team Spirit have won the Dota 2 tournament at the Esports World Cup in absolutely assertive fashion, taking hometown favorites Team Falcons out in three extremely clean games.

The two-time International champions weren’t messing around in this grand final match, refusing to let the crowd give Falcons the energy that they could have used to turn things around. They completely sucked the life out of the arena and out of the Falcons fan section in the stands, and they can now call themselves two-time Esports World Cup champions to go along with their two TI titles.

Game 1 — Hungry like the wolf

Falcons started off the series with some real 500 IQ creep cutting shenanigans, where Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak cleared the Radiant mid lane wave as Primal Beast using Trample (W). This allowed him to get level 2 pretty much instantly, which was important against the bad lane matchup he had versus Denis “Larl” Sigitov’s Queen of Pain.

This led me to believe that Malr1ne, ever the consummate professional when it comes to playing Primal Beast, would start the game on even footing with Larl at worst and with a level advantage at best. Unfortunately, the smart play ended up not mattering, because Spirit laughed in their faces.

Spirit’s last pick Lycan proved too much for Falcons to handle, as they were caught completely off guard by the fast pace. I mean, Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov built a full Helm of the Overlord in just 13 and a half minutes. Using a dominated Ancient Black Dragon neutral creep, he single-handedly enabled Spirit’s supports to gank any lane whenever they wanted to, which in turn allowed the entire team to snowball early.

With all three of their lanes falling behind fast, Falcons were left in a position that they just couldn’t recover from. The Templar Assassin from Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk was the icing on the cake for Spirit, with the overwhelming physical damage coming from their side helping them close the game out just before the 40 minute mark.

Game 2 — Medusa goes fast

Was this really a Medusa game? Spirit definitely drafted the hero for Yatoro, but played as if their pants were on fire and they needed to finish Falcons off before they managed to get too farmed. Coach Airat “Silent” Gaziev sounded extremely confident about the Medusa pick in the pre-game interview, saying that Yatoro in particular has been itching to play the hero against Doom.

Are you even trying? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/HMggsjh1Dj

— Team Spirit Dota 2 (@TSpirit_Dota2) July 19, 2025

True enough, Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf did pick up the Doom, but it was actually Larl’s Storm Spirit that proved to be the win condition for Team Spirit. His counter-initiation was spot on this game, helping the rest of his team keep Yatoro alive whenever Falcons would go on him. Austin “Capitalist” Walsh said it best at the end of the game: even though Yatoro’s Medusa was the crux of their draft and gameplan, it was the Storm Spirit that really stopped this game.

Of course, it also helped plenty that Collapse got his hands on Mars, one of his favorite heroes and one that really did well against Falcons’ hero composition. His Eul’s Scepter of Divinity into Spear of Mars (Q) combos were on point this time around, which was great to see considering how he was missing point blank spears at PGL Wallachia Season 5 just a month ago.

Game 3 — Spirit bully Falcons out of the building

With their backs against the wall in front of the home crowd, Falcons had no other choice but to dig deep and try to force a fourth game. They actually started things off with a pretty good draft, particularly with the Sniper, Razor, and Chen picks. This draft should have set them up nicely for the laning phase and the mid game, but what actually transpired was anything but nice.

They got straight up embarrassed in the early game. Spirit just made all the right decisions early on, getting pickoff after pickoff after pickoff with their very fast paced draft. You know that you’re having a bad day if you’re Falcons and your mid Sniper is getting ganked by the enemy Shadow Fiend, who was put in the safe lane at the start of the game.

You also know that you’re having a bad day if you’re Falcons and your Chen is level 3 eight and a half minutes in. Hell, there was a point around the 11-12 minute mark where the entirety of Team Spirit was levelled higher than Oliver “skiter” Lepko’s Chaos Knight. From there, basically any time a Falcons hero would show on the map, Spirit would be there to pounce on them right away.

With the walls closing in on Falcons as Spirit secured more and more map control, it was just a matter of time before they closed things out for good. Collapse’s 17 minute Aghanim’s Scepter timing on Dawnbreaker was pretty much the nail in the coffin, and at one point he was basically playing 1v5 on Falcons’ side of the map.

Team Spirit are surely feeling themselves after such an emphatic victory at the Esports World Cup, just as they should. This gives them a ton of momentum heading into The International in September, and personally I think they are now the favorites to win there. That alone would be a huge feat, as they would become the first ever three-time International champions as an organization.

Team Falcons meanwhile couldn’t quite get it done in Riyadh, but conceding a second place finish to Spirit is hardly anything to be ashamed of. If nothing else, they can hold their heads high as they seem to have found their form once more, which is more than I could have said about them over the last several months.