Spirit and SAW Advance to BLAST Spring Final, A Recap of the BLAST Spring Showdown
The BLAST Premier Spring Showdown finished this past weekend, solidifying the full eight team roster of teams that will be attending the BLAST Spring Final.
The two teams that made it to the Spring Final are Team Spirit lead by their rising young star in Danil “donk” Kryshkovets and SAW an up-and-coming Portuguese team that first turned heads in the European RMR when they qualified for the Copenhagen Major. SAW is led by Rafael “arrozdoce” Wing and João “story” Vieira two of the best talents coming out of Portugal.
The Spring Showdown brought with it a lot of upsets with the biggest one being the relatively unknown Swedish team Metizport eliminating one of the highest paid teams Falcons who had Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev return from his multiple month hiatus from professional Counter-Strike. Metizport made it all the way to the semi-finals before losing to the unstoppable Team Spirit, but in the process of just one event they were able to become possibly the best Swedish team in competition right now.
OG and BIG Clan were the other two surprise teams with OG making it all the way to the semi-finals before losing to SAW to be eliminated from contention. OG did find their new superstar during this event with Nikita “HeavyGod” Martynenko having one of the best performances out of any individual player the entire event. Unfortunately, HeavyGod was absent from their series against SAW due to an illness which forced OG to put a substitute in Alexandru “s0und” Stefan a player from Nexus.
BIG (Berlin International Gaming) debuted their new fully German roster which did not disappoint with a solid performance against GamerLegion and having a good map one against Spirit until they would collapse on Vertigo against Spirit.
The team with by far the worst performance was Liquid. Liquid has been sputtering the past few events having a hard time to get their new roster in a solid spot with the team still having a lack of chemistry even after being together for a few months. The shift from Mareks “YEKINDAR” Gaļinskis to Casper “cadiaN” Møller as in-game leader has taken longer than expected to fully blend into the monster that this team can easily become.
The BLAST Spring Final will take place June 14 -16 in London, United Kingdom with a total of eight teams attending and the winner advancing to the BLAST Premier World Final.
