Dota 2 was released over 10 years ago, and while that's not a long time compared to some other MOBAs, in that time the game has become a part of the lives of many gamers around the world.

This includes professional players . From the Recruit to the participant of The International championship, many teams followed a similar path. Ups, downs, stagnation - all this is typical for the world of eSports. This applies even to such a famous name as Team Spirit. One of the top teams in Dota 2 today, back in 2021 they barely finished fourth in a regular regional DPC. How did this team achieve such success?

What started Team Spirit

Team Spirit's path to The International began in 2015, with the team's inception. Back then, they weren't in their full lineup, which can be seen in today's pro matches. The general director of Team Spirit was Nikita Chukalin under the pseudonym Cheshir. The main cast was drawn from a variety of players, with contenders from notable teams like Cyber Anji, LQ, and Team Empire being considered and even making some appearances, but no real progress was made for Team Spirit.

This continued until 2020, until the current composition of the team partially assembled.

First successes

The end of 2020 was quite successful for Team Spirit. They finally selected almost the full composition of the "Yellow Submarine" team: Ilya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk , Oleksandr "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek , Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov . The captain was Yaroslav "Miposhka" Naydenov , who plays in the support position. The manager of the team was Ruslana Berest, better known in the network as DKLana.

This is not the final roster, but with such a solid foundation, the team enters the 2021 regional pro season. It didn't go very well, although they did quite well. Due to the recently assembled team composition in the global season, they could not participate. However, even fourth place was enough to ignite a fire in the boys.

The second season of 2021

In addition to the acquired motivation, Team Spirit also found something much more valuable - the missing link in the form of Myroslav Kolpakov, aka Mira . Not only did they place quite high again (2nd this time), but they were also able to advance to the group stage of the WePlay AniMajor.

Unfortunately, their success ended there: they were eliminated in the middle of the lower bracket, losing painfully to Vici Gaming .

According to the results of the 2021 seasons, they did not collect enough points to qualify for The International 2021 championship, due to which they had to go through several additional qualification grids. They made it through, but barely with a score of 3:2 against Team Empire , the boys were ready to perform on the big stage.

The International 2021

The composition of the team at the moment looks like this:

• Yatoro – carry;

• TORONTOTOKYO – mid laner;

• Collapse - offline;

• Miposhka - full-sup;

• Mira is a semisap.

The first, group stage went quite well: 4th place, standing ovations and the opportunity to show themselves in all their glory helped the team gather their spirits and hold on until the very finals. Of course, the loss in the first match dropped them to the bottom bracket, but Team Spirit performed well.

The final itself was extremely intense - there were 5 games. Even so, they were able to raise Aegis Champions and win the title of the best team in the region, as well as high-class players on the world stage.

Team Spirit was not going to stop there. They have been competing in smaller competitions and honing their skills for a grand performance at The International 2023 . And while TORONTOTOKYO left the team in 2022, LarI , aka Denis Sigitov, took up the team's Midlaner torch and performed brilliantly, not least as a result of which Team Spirit won their second Dota 2 World Champions title.

The team is definitely going to take part in the next championship. Will they succeed in becoming champions for the third time? Only time will tell.