Team Spirit signs panto while Miposhka is benched ahead of BLAST Slam 4

The preliminary stage of BLAST Slam 4 is just five days away now with the 12 teams locked in and ready to do battle, though Team Spirit will be fielding a slightly different roster for the tournament. Instead of captain Yaroslav “Miposhka” Naidenov, the two-time International champions will go with Nikita “panto” Balaganin.

Recently released by Aurora Gaming in the post-International 2025 roster shuffle, panto will get to play with the best of the best in Team Spirit in the first major tournament of the new season. And while panto has experience playing at significant events like this one, he may have to psych himself up given the player he’ll be replacing.

To the big leagues

Incidentally, this isn’t panto’s first rodeo at BLAST Slam. He stood in for PARIVISION’s Andrey “Dukalis” Kuropatkin at BLAST Slam 1, when Dukalis couldn’t attend due to visa issues. He played admirably for being thrust so suddenly into a team he wasn’t familiar with, placing on the podium with the rest of the PARIVISION roster.

Welcome Panto! 🙌

Nikita "Panto" Balaganin becomes the new hard support in the Team Spirit Dota 2 roster 💪

Yaroslav "Miposhka" Naidenov has decided to put his career on a pause, joining the reserves 🫂 pic.twitter.com/SwkW2Ht3rf

— Team Spirit Dota 2 (@TSpirit_Dota2) October 9, 2025

Now that he’s on Team Spirit, I’m sure he’s going to relish the opportunity to play for such a legendary club. The shoes panto will be filling at BLAST Slam 4 are massive, though, given Miposhka’s highly impressive resume. Two International titles and many top level tournament wins are all hard to live up to — not to mention that that panto will also have to play the role of captain and shotcaller now that Miposhka isn’t around.

Fortunately, he has time to prepare. The group stage actually begins on October 14th, but the LAN part is actually all the way in the first week of November. Should he and the rest of Spirit get past the two elimination rounds, he’ll have plenty of time to get ready for the spotlight in Singapore.

Miposhka on vacation

So as it turns out, Miposhka is taking a break from competitive play. I initially thought this was just going to be a stand-in type situation, but Team Spirit straight up announced that Miposhka was “putting his career on pause”. Apparently panto will be part of Spirit full time, something that I didn’t expect given Miposhka’s immense value to this team.

But I guess even legends like Miposhka have to rest. For now, panto will have to prove that he’s ready for a much bigger role than he’s ever had in his career.