Team Yandex force longest game at Esports World Cup to compete another day

Team Yandex, formerly known as Cyber Goose, dispatched Shopify Rebellion 2-0 in the Gauntlet bracket at Esports World Cup 2025 to book a meeting with the defending champions, Gaimin Gladiators.

At 34 years old, Alexey "Solo" Berezin might be the oldest player at Esports World Cup (EWC) this year, but that only means he is also the most experienced, and with him in the captain role, Team Yandex got a perfect mix of raw talent and calmness of the mind.

A great comeback

Yandex started the elimination series against Shopify on an aggressive stance, but pushed the pedal too hard and ended up making multiple unfavourable trades. That allowed Shopify’s Enzo "Timado" Gianoli to accelerate the item progression on his Terrorblade and join the fights fairly early.

Past the 20-minute mark, Yandex decided to play only for pickoffs and wait for Shopify to make a mistake. The decision allowed them to catch up to Shopify in kills and net worth to the point where, around the 40-minute mark, the game was dead even with the kill score being 26 to 25 in favour of Shopify, who also held only a 4k gold lead. Nonetheless, Shopify managed to breach the high ground first and take the mid lane barracks from Yandex, along with the Tier 3 towers in the side lanes.

However, Yandex were able to hold on to their base, and past the 40-minute mark, they were ready to fight with a Refresher Orb on their carry Doom, which proved to be a key item for them to be able to turn the tables. Their overall itemisation in the late game was a response to all that SR were doing. One hour into the game, Yandex had multiple Wind Wakers on their side, two hexes and three Refresher Orbs (on Doom, Tidehunter and Nature’s Prophet) to control SR in every team fight.

Yandex pushed the first game of the series past 70 minutes, setting the record for the longest game at the Esports World Cup so far, and slowly but surely crawled their way back to claim the victory. Coming into the second game, SR seemed still shaken by the loss and unable to coordinate in teamfights in order to stay alive in the tournament.

“This year was kind of a rollercoaster for us due to how many roster changes we had,” said Timado in his exit interview. “When you put together five players, each from a different region, it’s kind of hard to make it work,” he added, emphasising the many issues and lack of chemistry that can come with an international roster. Esports World Cup 2025 marked the end of the season for him and Shopify Rebellion, who fell short of a qualifier spot at The International 2025.

Team Yandex will return to action on Sunday, July 13 at 14:30 CET when they will fight for their tournament lives against Gaimin Gladiators, the Esports World Cup reigning champions.