Leonid 'chopper' Vishnyakov, the in-game leader of Team Spirit’s CS2 roster, spoke about what failed for his team in the semifinal match against Team Vitality at the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 and called the final placement a respectable outcome.
Chopper admitted that part of the responsibility for the defeat lay with him, but also pointed out that Vitality's greater experience in decisive moments was a factor. He stressed that his role as captain is to keep the team under control, and that he felt he did not manage that properly in the crucial phases of the match.
As he put it, 'My job as captain is to control the team. I didn’t handle that properly today. In clutch situations, like at 10–12 and similar moments, the opponents probably had more experience than we did. That’s all there is to it.'
He singled out Dust2 as a map where the team could not recover economically after losing an early round. According to chopper, a single lost round snowballed into a situation where Team Spirit lacked the funds to mount a comeback and did not have the utility needed to contest Vitality effectively.
Chopper also relayed what the coach told the roster during the break between maps: 'Guys, that was our game, don’t think about this map. Just reboot and show your attack like you know how to on Dust2. Don’t get stuck on the previous map; you still have two more maps.' Despite that message, the economy collapsed after losing the third round and the opponent’s buy rounds quickly put Spirit on the back foot.
He described how the situation escalated: a narrow loss of one round left them without the necessary grenades and resources, and even a couple of small mistakes made it very difficult to turn the tide. In competitive matches those tiny margins can decide control of a map.
Looking back on the season as a whole, chopper said that reaching the playoffs was a positive achievement for a young squad. He emphasized that the team has been together only a short time and still needs to build cohesion to compete consistently for titles.
''In parts it was a good year, in parts it wasn’t. We didn’t have huge expectations for this tournament. Even making the playoffs is a good result for us. We are a young team and have only been playing together for two to three months. tN1R joined us recently, and there is a lot of work ahead of us,'' he said.
The StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 ran from November 24 to December 14 with a $1.25 million prize pool. Team Spirit fell to Team Vitality 0–2 in the semifinal and finished the event in a shared third–fourth place. Tournament schedules and match results are available in the event report.