A clean Esports World Cup sweep
The hometown crowd in Riyadh was left speechless as Team Spirit delivered a knockout blow to Team Falcons in the finals of Dota 2 at the 2025 Esports World Cup. Securing a convincing 3-0 sweep over the Falcons, Spirit claimed their first major international victory since April.
Team Spirit had been dominant all tournament, dropping just a single game – their only loss all event – back in the group stage. The squad then went on a perfect run in the playoffs. Team Falcons weren’t about to let them have an easy victory, though. They started the first game by utilizing an unorthodox strategy: letting Stanislav "Malr1ne" Potorak’s Primal Beast proxy two waves from both the bot and mid lanes at the start.
While this gave him enough early-game resources to effectively mitigate the awful lane matchup Primal Beast has against Queen of Pain, it just wasn’t enough to hold back Team Spirit. The Eastern European squad massively outfarmed their opponents, controlled Roshan, and secured their first win.

Point of no return
It once again looked like Team Falcons had the advantage from the draft and early game at the start of the second match. With Oliver "skiter" Lepko’s Sven and Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf’s Doom getting strong starts, Team Spirit could have been in trouble – if not for the impressive performance of Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk. His Medusa pick was the ultimate deciding factor, amassing a 11k gold lead and locking in a second win.
Unfortunately, that seemed to be the Falcons' breaking point, and the third game felt like a done deal. A brutal engage composition featuring Dawnbreaker, Monkey King, and Yatoro’s dominant Shadow Fiend left little room for Team Falcons to breathe, sealing the 3-0 win for Team Spirit.