Team Spirit claim their first championship title of 2024 at PGL Wallachia

Ame and Yatoro went head to head to decide who is the best carry of the moment.

PGL Wallachia Season 1 finals day brought a full marathon of Dota 2 for Team Spirit. The double TI champions started the day by taking down Team Falcons 2:1 in a nail-biting lower bracket final to join Xtreme Gaming in the best-of-five grand finals.

XG had a perfect tournament run, reaching the final act undefeated with an impressive 12-0 game record. Coming into the PGL Wallachia grand finals, they also held an intimidating 80% win rate over Team Spirit this year. The two teams clashed through the first months of the year at a couple of previous tournaments and the best Team Spirit could do against XG were two draw scores in the group stages of BetBoom Dacha Dubai and ESL One Birmingham 2024. The rest of their direct confrontations closed with a loss for Team Spirit, including at PGL Wallachia, where XG sent them to the lower bracket in the first place.

PGL Wallachia Grand Finals: Xtreme GamingvsTeam Spirit

While the grand finals were bound to bring the most anticipated carry matchup, Wang "Ame" Chunyu versus Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk, XG’s support 4 Zhao "XinQ" Zixing stole the show completely in the opening game. He took his greedy play style to the next level and went on playing as a fourth core on a position 4 Riki that proved to be the perfect counter to everything Team Spirit was trying to put together. He went for a rushed Aghanim's Shard and Diffusal Blade to make sure that no hero caught in the Smoke Screen would be saved. He was able to accelerate his farm on the back of a perfect laning stage alongside Darkseer to transition into a true core with Linken’s and Nullifier in his inventory.

But the game one success made XinQ push it even further and try a position 4 Naga Siren in game two. This is where Xtreme Gaming’s 13-0 win streak stopped and the grand finals took a turn in favour of Team Spirit. The battle went back and forth between the two teams, forcing Team Spirit to hit 10 hours in the booths as XG weren’t ready to give up easily. The Chinese outfit took game three while Team Spirit pushed the grand finals to a decisive game five with a signature Faceless Void-Enchantress safe lane duo of theirs. The two heroes were stolen by XG in game five, so Yatoro dug deep in his hero pool and brought to light an Anti-Mage to clinch the first championship title for his team this year.