Alexey 'OverDrive' Biryukov shared his thoughts on the recent victory of Team Spirit at The International 10. He believes that thanks to the achievements of the players, the esports club will be able to overtake Natus Vincere and Virtus.pro in terms of media coverage.
Biryukov said in his blog that he received a lot of positive emotions, and the Spirit players, in his opinion, have an extraordinary intellect and they can be called geniuses:
It was very cool and unforgettable. I got a lot of emotions, and the players are geniuses. No matter how monsters of mechanics the Chinese were in decision, creativity or execution, they could not answer Spirit with anything. This is a victory not only for the players, but also for the organization as a whole.
Biryukov also speculated about Team Spirit's approach to building a Dota 2 team. He believes that the main idea is not to build a team of star players, but to hire a sensible manager and coach:
The main idea is not to take separately star players and build something around them, but to hire people who can assemble the squad. This is how Korb3n and Silent appeared. They managed to assemble a brilliant team.
NS recently spoke about further motivating Spirit to play in the future. He believes that it will be difficult for the players to find the strength to keep playing, as they won the main tournament and a lot of money, as recently mentioned by one of the team members, Yaroslav 'Miposhka' Naydenov.
Alexey 'OverDrive' Biryukov thinks differently. According to him, Spirit may have enough motivation to play at the
next Major championship:
For Spirit CS: GO roster, this victory at TI10 should be the motivation for a good performance at the Major. Yes, it will be more difficult than the Dota 2 roster on Inta, but why not? It is certainly difficult, but not as far away as it might seem.
Biryukov believes that Natus Vincere and Virtus.pro can significantly yield to Spirit in the media space for obvious reasons:
After winning TI, Spirit organization can catch up or even surpass NAVI and Virtus.pro in media coverage. <...> There are no such big names in the CIS anymore, Gambit is probably a little lower in this regard. This is already a cool year for Spirit.
The International 2021 kicked off from October 7th to 17th. The total prize fund of the championship was $ 40,018,195, and 18 best teams in the world were involved in its distribution, representing six playing regions: North America, South America, CIS, Europe, Southeast Asia and China. 12 teams took part in the tenth The International due to the required number of rating points gained during the Dota Pro Circuit 2020/2021 season. The other six teams got the opportunity to play thanks to the regional qualifications.
With Team Spirit's victory, the players earned $ 18,208,300 and pushed the esports organization into the top 4 clubs in the world with the highest prize money. The next championship in which Team Spirit players will play will be the CS: GO event PGL Major Stockholm 2021. The Major tournament for the first time in CS: GO history will have a prize pool of $ 2,000,000. On October 26, Spirit will come face to face with their first rival in this event. They will fight the FaZe Clan.