Team Spirit are the first Esports World Cup 2025 grand finalists

Team Spirit, the kings of comebacks, have done it again to reach the Esports World Cup grand finals undefeated.

Semifinals are on the menu this Friday at Esports World Cup (EWC) with Team Spirit and PARIVISION opening the day in an explosive manner. Two of the best carries of the moment (players and heroes) went head to head to determine who would get to play in the grand finals and who would return to the stage for the 3rd/4th place decider.

“I think they will play a tempo game, that they will try to snowball right from the start and not let us play the map,” said Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov before the series started.

With that in mind, Spirit came prepared to fight fire with fire and aligned a very aggressive line-up to outpace PARIVISION. They had Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk on a carry Nature’s Prophet, while PVISION were looking to fight with a carry Doom. But while the latter tried to secure plenty of lockdowns, Spirit went all in on the objective taking type of play. They had Shadow Shaman on their side and closed the draft with a mid lane Leshrac to take a clean and fast first game victory.

The carry matchups remained the same in game two, but the push power was secured by PARIVISION, who got their hands on the Shadow Shaman and a mid lane Death Prophet. At the same time, Spirit somewhat lacked strong disables and found themselves being bullied through the first 30 minutes of the game.

Team Spirit and playing from behind, name a more iconic duo

However, Spirit are known to be the best team at playing from behind, and a 10k gold deficit 20 minutes into the game didn’t scare them all too much. They patiently waited for PVISION to come for the high ground and punish them, allowing them to start mounting a comeback.

“We made a team decision to go for the high ground, and it was probably not the best decision because we got destroyed there, and then we lost the second Rosh and all went south,” highlighted PARIVISION’s offlaner, Dmitry "DM" Dorokhin, in his exit interview after the match.

While they lost the battle for a spot in the grand finals, PARIVISION will still return to the stage on Saturday, July 19, for the third-place decider. Their adversaries will be decided in the upcoming Tundra Esports vs Team Falcons second semifinal at the Esports World Cup 2025.