OverDrive on reasons of Team Spirit’s reshuffle

Esports analyst Alexey "OverDrive" Birukov, in a video on his YouTube channel opened up about the changes in Team Spirit, which Leonid "chopper" Vishnyakov, Nikolay "mir" Bityukov and Viktor "somedieyoung" Orudzhev left earlier in November. In his opinion, the main reason for the disbandment was internal disagreements.

This roster is very peculiar, since each player has his own vision of the game and players do not want to accept the vision of one another. Thus, someone plays their own CS, while someone is forced to play a different CS. And since there is an obvious trio of chopper, mir and somedieyoung, who have been playing together for a long time, it is a total tug of war. This is how I see it, and not an official position. Accordingly, magixx shows around 60% of his power, as he was given such a role and cannot do anything about it, being the "tell me what to do, and I will do it” type of player. The same goes with degster, who, in those games that I saw, watched "apartments" from CT on Mirage, "secret" from the "silo" on Nuke... I mean, you don't need to invite a great AWPer to do this, because any tier-2 or tier-3 AWPer can handle it. His potential is simply not being reached.

OverDrive believes that this roster could have been disbanded after 2-3 month since its inception, but it was saved thanks to the efforts of coach Nikolay "Certus" Poluyanov, who managed to find the balance.

Overall, it is a volatile mixture of players: each with his own character, everyone can get toxic. Certus was looking for that balance, and in fact, no one would have done better than him. It is clear that the end of the year was disappointing, but if it were not for Certus, the team would have fallen apart in 2-3 months, because it is really a volatile mixture.

At the same time, OverDrive shared information about mir being excluded from the main roster by the decision of the Team Spirit’s management, and did not leave after chopper was put to the transfer list, as the community assumed. He also named the struggles of each of the players mentioned.

Everybody thinks that mir left for chopper... But it is not the case. It was the organization's decision to remove two players at once. somedieyoung himself did not want to, and did not believe in a new Cinderella story, and left with his former teammates.

Due to the fact that chopper was an in-game leader in a super-difficult team, he had to sacrifice his individual level of play. If there was a squad where he was always encouraged and, accordingly, where the atmosphere was less tense, he would have done more frags, and there would be no questions to him. We all remember the chopper's potential, but he is still a fairly young player and is yet to reach his peak.

As for mir, he certainly is very skilled. Individually, he is just fine, and in his best form undoubtedly can be considered a tier-1 player. But mir is probably one of the most difficult teammates in any team. He has his own vision of the game, and if he wants to play like this, he will play like this. If you tell him that it would be better to play differently, he would reply: "Don't tell me anything". It is always very difficult to deal with such players. Everyone tries to adapt to each other, giving up some of their own ideas.

somedieyoung has always been consistent. I liked the way he played his role. The only thing I’m not happy about this year is him being a second AWPer. Many matches were lost due to this. Not because he plays or shoots poorly, but because when you have an AWP in your hands, you have to adhere to a completely different philosophy. It is not just holding a position, waiting for a kill. When it is the case, then yes, Vitya kills everyone, but when the action begins, when you have to move around with your AWP as if you were the main AWPer, it's when the things go wrong. <...> Again, he became a hostage to the fact that this squad did not synergize.

Following PGL Major Stockholm 2021, where Team Spirit failed to reach the Legends Stage, the CEO of the organization Nikita Chukalin announced a reboot of the roster. Subsequently, three players were transfer-listed.

Origin: youtu.be