Spirit started their run as favorites at Flow FiReLEAGUE Global Finals with a 2-0 victory over WINDINGO, defeating the Argentine side on Dust2 (16-7) and Nuke (16-12). The team’s newest addition, Igor “⁠w0nderful⁠” Zhdanov, was the highest-rated player on the server with a 1.36 after both maps, closely followed by in-game leader Leonid “⁠chopper⁠” Vishnyakov, who ended right behind with a 1.34.

The Russian squad will now face the winner of MIBR and 9z on Sunday in the second semi-final of the day at the Spotify Camp Nou, after which the teams that will compete in the grand final later that evening will be decided.

Boris “⁠magixx⁠” Vorobiev took a moment after his team’s victory to talk about some of the pressing topics for Spirit, such as the team’s expectations from the tournament in Barcelona, having Sergey “⁠hally⁠” Shavaev back behind the team in time for the Major, being favorites at Flow FiReLEAGUE, and some specifics about their adventures through the tournament’s bracket.

This is a bit of a follow-up on the interview from the RMR. In that interview you talked a bit about this event being a good place to get some experience before the Major. How much experience do you think you can get here in a few series? How much can it improve your game?

The experience is not the first thing we’re looking to get from this tournament, I think that this tournament is a great place to warm up before the Major. If we play well here we can get rolling into the Major and not be in a disadvantageous position against the teams that come from the Challengers Stage. The teams coming from the Challengers Stage will have played three to five games and the Legends Stage teams will not come hot and ready.

This is kind of a warm-up and a place to find things to work on because we have officials and from officials we can watch demos, see what’s wrong with our stuff, and we can make some hotfixes before the Major. It is very important because this tournament is right before the Major and it will show the issues in our play, etc.

You make a good point about going straight to the Legends Stage. Of course it’s what every team wants, but how do you feel about not getting to play those Challengers Stage matches?

It’s a great thing that we made it straight to the Legends Stage because we won’t need to qualify for the next RMR, which is a hell of an open qualifier. It’s a pretty dangerous place. So it’s great, but I’m not sure that it’s much better than going to the Challengers Stage. If you go to the Challengers Stage there’s a risk you can not make it through, but I think that the advantage of being hot and ready, spending more days in another continent — it’s a long flight — and being more used to the place will be much better for the teams making it through the Challengers Stage. I hope we will get used to it really fast.

One of the things you said before was the importance of peaking at the Major. How realistic do you think it is that Spirit will peak at that Major? Is there a big possibility of that happening or will the team maybe need a bit more time?

I can say that we’ve shown a pretty decent game at the RMR and there was still a lot of room to work on, we had a super close game against GamerLegion, against Bad News Eagles, all of the games were pretty close. It shows that we’re not doing that well, we still have things to fix and we have to go through our demos again.

We will need to go through the demos from this tournament and continue grinding so that we can do well at the Major. We’ve shown that we’re capable of playing well, like we did against Cloud9, one of the best teams in the world, so we just need to continue working, fixing stuff and continue playing a lot before the Major.

One thing about coming to this type of event is that if you do really well you can be hot and ready, but if you don’t do well it could affect your confidence.

Well, I don’t really want to predict if we’ll lose this tournament, but yes, it can cause some not best thoughts that you can have if you don’t win the tournament. I think it’s a lot about the mindset, if you’re playing a warm-up tournament before a Big Event you have to set your mindset that you’re coming into here not so much for victory but for the practice, to try things, to get more experience in officials if you don’t have a lot of officials throughout the year, and that’s it.

You’re at a spot now in which you’re considered a big team. You’re playing Majors, IEM Cologne, Pro League. What’s it like coming into an event like this in which you’re the highest-ranked team, you’re expected to win?

I’ve been answering this question and I’ll say it again, I do like being an underdog a bit more because it doesn’t apply any pressure on you. You’re just free to make your best plays and everyone will be surprised with it. It’s just about the pressure, some are fine with it, some are not, but I do like being an underdog a bit better.

You played the last Major without hally and you’re going to have him back this time around. How’s it having him back?

Back then, at the Major, IEM Cologne and Pro League, I was sure that it wouldn’t be a big issue, we would still do well. We were pretty hyped at the Major run because he was banned by ESIC three days before the event. It was a bad thing, but it hyped us, we played insane and rolled over a lot of enemies.

Talking about the coach being back now, it’s so much better because we’re preparing more together. Working with him when he’s close is a different thing than him being somewhere far, on TeamSpeak, because he can actually show more stuff, we can discuss more, the discussions have more information, it’s just so much better to have a coach who can even pause the game.

It has taken some pressure off the captain, who has to control the game and take pauses because the coach can do it and bring his own ideas since he’s spectating from behind. When there’s no coach it’s much harder, especially for the captain. We have hally and we’re going to make it better.

Tell me about your opening match against WINDINGO, it was pretty smooth sailing until that little bit on the final half of Nuke, when they brought it back to 12-12 before you closed it out on the CT side. What happened?

Honestly, talking about Nuke, it was a pretty easy game. We had an insane lead, I think it was like 11-4 on the T-side, we took a lot of rounds. The reason we lost that many rounds was that we played the pistol round pretty bad, some of the decision-making from some of us was really bad.

We got kind of back into the game after the pistol, but they won like five 1vs1 clutches in a row. I opened the scoreboard to check how many enemies survived and in four rounds there was one guy surviving and one round with two guys surviving. It was not so good, but clutches are pretty random sometimes. We knew their economy was super low with only one guy surviving every round and they had super low money.

We just did an eco, we won one round, their money was pretty fucked, we won one more round, they had a full eco, and then the game was done. It was just kind of a clutches game, that’s it.

Up next is MIBR or 9z, any preferences?

I can’t say. I’ve checked their stats and 9z have pretty decent statistics on Dust2, it’s like a 16 game winstreak on Dust2, I’m not sure. They also brought some new guys into the team because I remember they played well against Cloud9 on Roobet, it was super close. Talking about MIBR, we practiced against them a lot and they’re doing pretty well, so both enemies would be exciting to play against tomorrow.