w0nderful: "In the spring I had offers from Europe and the CIS, but that was not what I wanted"

In a conversation with journalists at a press conference ahead of IEM Cologne 2022, Team Spirit's AWPer Igor "w0nderful" Zhdanov said that in the spring of this year he received several offers from unnamed teams, but back then turned down such options to continue his career. According to the Ukrainian esports athlete, these were low-level rosters.

A month after February, I moved to Germany. I lived there for a month and a half or two, I don't remember exactly. Then I moved back to Odessa. I stayed there for a month and then they invited me for a test in Team Spirit. <...> In the spring I had offers from Europe and the CIS, but that was not what I wanted at the time. These were tier 2 and tier 3 teams.

w0nderful has not played any official matches for the last five months. He believes that in the run-up to the debut for Team Spirit at IEM Cologne 2022, the lack of competitive practice is not a problem.

I think everything will be fine. There is nothing bad about not playing official matches for five months. We will prepare well with the team, so this fact will not affect anything. There is no problem.

Team Spirit will start their IEM Cologne 2022 campaign from the Play-In stage, facing Complexity in the opening match. The meeting will be played in a best-of-one format and will kick off tomorrow, July 5, at 12:00 MSK.