Falcons falter, Spirit experience resurgence at PGL Wallachia Season 7

PGL Wallachia Season 7 may go down this season as the time we had to sound the alarm bells about Team Falcons, as they have been eliminated from contention at the tournament in Bucharest, Romania. The fourth and penultimate day of the group stage saw the reigning International champions drop the ball on their last chance at survival, failing to fend off Vici Gaming to keep themselves afloat.

On the other hand, Team Spirit are looking much better than they have over the past few months, easily clinching a 3-0 result in the Swiss table and with it a guaranteed spot in the playoffs.

The slump continues

Falcons have been on a gradual downward spiral pretty much this entire season. The last time they showed up in a grand final was at BLAST Slam 4 Singapore, where they took the eventual champions Tundra Esports to all five games. Since then, however, they’ve not performed up to the standard that is normally expected of them.

Now, I will cut them a bit of slack for their last two tournament appearances in particular. They had to play without Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf at DreamLeague Season 28 thanks to a supposed eye infection, and had to contend with not having Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak here at Wallachia due to visa issues. They’ve essentially not been at full power for their last two outings, which is never ideal for a team that relies so much on the chemistry that they’ve built over the last three years.

That said, that’s really only half the equation — because they didn’t look like the world-beaters that they usually are even in tournaments where they fielded their full roster. They got blown out of the building by Team Yandex at BLAST Slam 5 Chengdu, and settled for eighth place at DreamLeague Season 27. A shaky performance at BLAST Slam 6 Malta followed just under two months later.

Oof.#FalconsAreHere – #PGLWallachia pic.twitter.com/0uzighXnTJ

— Falcons Esports (@FalconsEsport) March 10, 2026

The thing is, there isn’t one player you can really point the finger at in their recent skid. They’re mostly playing bad as a unit rather than there being one or two players that are slacking individually. And given that Andreas Franck “Cr1t-” Nielsen mentioned in my interview with him at BLAST Slam 6 that this team feeds off of the fact that they’ve stuck together for so long, it’s unlikely that they’ll be making roster changes any time soon. Not after having to play with stand-ins for two competitions in a row, anyway.

Still, they’ve been playing poorly as of late, and that can’t really be denied. But, if they’re this mid at ESL One Birmingham in two weeks’ time with their full roster, I think they’re going to have to start asking each other some uncomfortable questions regarding the lineup.

Lifted spirits

On a more positive note, it’s nice to see that Team Spirit seem to be bouncing back after slumping even harder than Falcons in the last few months. To be fair to them, they’d been without Denis “Larl” Sigitov’s services on and off during that span, which as I’ve already mentioned (in relation to Falcons) is not what you want at this level.

They made the absolute most out of the matches that got thrown their way in the PGL Wallachia Season 7 Swiss stage, winning every single one despite the fact that every one of their series went to three games. Xtreme Gaming, Team Falcons, and finally HEROIC — one by one they succumbed to the might of Spirit in this group stage.

And lest we forget, you just can’t afford to let these guys get to the late game, as evidenced by their victory over HEROIC in the third game of their series on Monday. HEROIC enjoyed a small but not insignificant gold lead in the mid game of that map in particular, but that all went away when Larl decided to lock in. His Puck was the difference maker heading into the late game, proving to the people watching at home that him missing time every now and again has not taken away his edge.

That said, there’s still something that they have to clean up if they want to make a deep run in the playoffs. Game 2 against Falcons on Sunday was hardly what I’d call Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk’s finest hour. He made some errors in that game that really made me scratch my head a couple times, like blinking onto Falcons’ high ground by himself and getting severely punished for it.

Mind you, he was playing carry Beastmaster, so jumping in would have normally been a good idea with the hero he was piloting. Add to that the fact that they had a net worth lead of 16,000 gold by the 33 minute mark, and it could very well have been the killing blow. Instead, he miscalculated how close the rest of his team was, and he simply got his ass run down by Artem “lorenof” Melnyk’s Razor after he had killed Wu “Sneyking” Jingjun’s Warlock.

Things started to unravel because of this, with the rest of Falcons capitalizing on Yatoro’s hubris by cleaning up the stragglers on Spirit’s side. This gave Falcons the opening they had so desperately been waiting for in this game. They made sure not to waste it, as they chipped away at the lead off the back Oliver “skiter” Lepko’s Kez play.

Falcons eventually won this game as a result, but they ended up losing the series anyway after Yatoro decided to stop messing around in game 3. That could have gone much worse for Spirit in hindsight, but at least they were able to secure the 2-1 victory in the end.

Elsewhere in the group stage

“Oof” is all I have to say about MOUZ at PGL Wallachia Season 7. They lost all of three of their matches, and slid straight into elimination territory after they couldn’t even manage to beat OG. I know I mentioned alarm bells with regards to Falcons, but honestly, they should apply twice over to MOUZ. They’ve been downright putrid ever since winning PGL Wallachia Season 6, and I’m really not sure this roster will look the same for much longer.

I expected Tundra to do better here, but they are 2-2 and fighting for a spot in the playoffs right now. They’ve got another chance to clinch that spot tomorrow when they face PARIVISION — a matchup where Tundra should pretty significantly be favored. After all, PARIVISION only looked good to start this group stage because they played Yellow Submarine and Na’Vi. They fell back down to earth once they faced actually good teams.

Shoutouts to Aurora Gaming and HEROIC in particular after day 4. I didn’t think Aurora would be in such prime position to advance to the playoffs by this point, given that they don’t have Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko with them here. I also mentioned that his stand-in Alik “V-Tune” Vorobey was a straight downgrade in comparison, but he has impressed me thus far with his performances.

As for HEROIC, they’ve needed this boost in confidence for a while now, and for once they’re not throwing critical games with boneheaded decision-making in close situations. I’m excited about what Santiago “TaiLung” Agüero Gustavo and the rest of his team can accomplish from here, as they have the upcoming double elimination bracket to look forward to.