Spirit beat FUT 2-1 in the series that opened their BLAST Rivals 2026 Season 2 campaign in Hong Kong. The win moves Spirit into the next round, but the series will be remembered for what happened on Nuke.
FUT, who used coach András "coolio" Fercsák as a stand-in, took Nuke 13-0. It was Spirit's first 13-0 defeat in CS2. According to HLTV, FUT had lost all five of their Nuke maps against VRS top-5 teams over the last 12 months, while Spirit had won five straight Nuke maps picked by opponents.
Before that, Spirit won Cache 13-9, and in the deciding map they beat FUT 13-5 on Ancient. Danil "donk" Kryshkovets and Andrey "tN1R" Tatarinovich were key on Ancient, while Myroslav "zont1x" Plakhotia contributed on the CT side. Donk was the best player of the series with a 1.59 rating.
Spirit will next play the winner of MOUZ vs G2 in the group's upper final.
Donk said after the match that Spirit's T side on Nuke was simply very bad. HLTV notes that it is rare for a team to be shut out on a map by a side featuring a coach, and even rarer for the team winning such a map to lose the series.
