Team Spirit Talk About the Sacrifices They Made to Win TI10

A stunning lower bracket run by Team Spirit at The International 10 (TI10) took the Dota 2 world by storm. They might still be young, but Team Spirit's members are now regarded as Dota 2 legends as a result of their win at TI10. With that in mind, it becomes all the more interesting for fans to learn what Team Spirit had to endure and overcome in its journey to become the Dota 2 champions. During a recent press conference, Team Spirit’s members, including the roster, the two managers, and the coach, spoke about the sacrifices they made, the hurdles they had to overcome, the time it took for them to arrive so far, as well as their future goals.

Team Spirit's journey to TI10

The performance of Team Spirit at TI10 and their overall improvement is quite remarkable, but it is also quite admirable that they qualified through the regional qualifiers. Airat "Silent" Gaziev, Team Spirit's coach, noted that qualifying was their greatest obstacle in the path to TI10. He explained that they had little time and resources to prepare for the qualifier since it took place shortly after they had performed at the WePlay AniMajor. At the qualifier, Team Spirit defeated Team Empire 3-2 in a highly competitive grand final. Team Spirit were not in the best shape at that moment due to the lack of time and the fatigue upon them from the Major, Silent added.

“The hurdles in the path to TI10? Well I guess the qualifier had been the greatest hurdle because we played it after an exhausting bootcamp. Due to the virus, we were locked in together in a limited space and we had nothing to do besides training, no distractions from the game at all. Then we went to the Major in Kyiv and barely had a week to rest before the qualifier started and to be honest, we were exhausted, totally out of shape. We had to find some last resources, both physical and moral to just keep playing and that is the reason that we couldn’t show our best at the qualifier, but it’s great that we managed to overcome all of it.”

Team Spirit's members not only coped with the pressure put on them by the professional environment, but they also had to make adjustments in their personal lives for their pursuit of the Aegis of Champions. Position four player Miroslaw "Mira" Kolpakov explained that most of their time was spent in bootcamps, which meant that they were away from their friends.

“I guess the most obvious thing is we mostly had to give up our private lives. I mean, this was our life, we’ve spent most of the time at our bootcamp to prepare for the leagues and events and TI itself. Overall that must be the biggest sacrifice we made. The rest is the rest, some hobbies, some free time we could spend however we wanted that did not matter much in the end. But no friends, no girlfriends must have been the biggest one.”

There is no denying that Dota 2 has a very high ceiling and to perform well requires tons of hard work and talent.

Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov, who plays position three for Team Spirit, reinforced this point with their own journeys, citing the high number of hours they put into Dota 2 to reach their goals.

“It takes a lot of time and effort to get good at this game. I think each and every one of us has around 15-20k hours played. Means everyone on the team invested a lot of time, emotions, and effort to get here, to reach the target we have set for ourselves before we even started playing it.”

TI10 win and the future of Team Spirit

Team Spirit's final scores at TI10 might look decent at a glance, but the TI10 campaign started poorly. Team Secret and PSG.LGD were the opponents in its first two group stage matchups, and the team lost both series 2-0. Silent explained in the press conference that there was pressure initially with four TI first-timers on the squad. This led to them playing in a manner as to not lose rather than playing for the win.

“Well, I think we were still nervous going to TI10. As for the four players, it was the first event and it’s quite natural to feel under the weather. So we played not to lose, which is completely different from playing to win. Trying to avoid a loss brings more pressure. Some things, you do on the fly, you start doubting here and then, and that was the primary reason the first day went sideways. But we got together and went through mistakes and we knew we could do things better and those were some minor issues and we got our confidence back and the next days were completely different.”

Additionally, among the people who are being credited for assembling this Team Spirit roster in late 2020 is Dmitry "Korb3n" Belov, who is the team's Dota 2 manager. During the press conference, Korb3n compared Team Spirit’s victory at TI10 to a Russian Football Club winning the Champions League.

“I guess the victory at TI10 could be compared to a Russian Football Club Winning Champions League. The only difference would be the kind of sports, but speaking of the scale of the Championship, the structure of it, I can only compare it to the Champions League.”

UEFA Champions League is an annual football tournament featuring the best teams from European clubs.

Alexander "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek, the midlaner for Team Spirit, later remarked he now looks forward to winning another TI in front of a live audience. It was only a few days before TI10 that a live audience had to be cancelled, and Valve utilized fake crowd noises during games to make up for it. TORONTOTOKYO acknowledged that though fake noises were good, real crowds would create a distinct experience.

“With a real crowd, that would have been a totally different story. Some call us the “people’s team” because we have so many dedicated fans who always cheer for us and seeing them after each victory, every time leaving that booth and they scream, they chant, that would charge us with their energy. And for the next goal, the next step would be winning a TI with the live audience, to experience it the proper way and I hope we can do that maybe next year.”

Later in the day, Team Spirit went to the popular 'Evening Urgant' late-night Russian talk show where TORONTOTOKYO also discussed the team’s plans for the future.

He said that there was an idea among Dota players that they have to retire after winning TI. However, he pointed out that this is unique to Dota and esports by saying that football players don't retire after winning the Champions League. He said that they would try to replicate this, adding that Team Spirit was more ambitious than ever and will try to play on the same level that they did at TI10

As the winners of TI10, Team Spirit earned the prize money of $18,208,300 USD.