Team Spirit player Danil "donk" Kryshkovets discussed the reasons for his team's loss against The Mongolz at IEM Cologne 2024 in a vlog on the team's YouTube channel.
"Everything went wrong. On Ancient, it's hard to pinpoint what exactly went wrong. Overall, things started off well; we had a strong beginning on the T-side, but then there was a series of unnecessary duels and actions. Constant resets—both theirs and ours—led us to a 12:10 score, with us on a full buy and them on a bad buy. It was quite comfortable for us, but then someone rushes mid, burns in molotov, and even though we hear it and I peek to kill him because I know where he is, he still manages to get two headshots with an MP9 and then kills Miroslav [zont1x], who was trying to trade. It's hard to say we did something wrong. The guy made a mistake, and we couldn’t punish it—we went to overtime. In overtime, we just didn’t play as we usually do. We missed grenades, had some miscommunications, and didn’t play in our usual manner."
Donk noted that on the second map of the series, the opponents might have played more freely after their earlier victory.
"Partly, [The MongolZ really caught fire]. After such a hard-fought, exhausting map, the team that wins has the morale boost going into the second map, and they even came back a bit on the first. It was the same story as on Ancient: we made poor decisions and were inattentive in trades. They played well, without a doubt. It was our most devastating loss on Anubis, a map we haven’t lost on in a long time."
Donk doesn’t believe that the loss on the first map had a significant impact on his team.
"I can only speak for myself, but I personally wasn’t tilted after the loss on the first map. The fact that we lost the first map didn’t really affect the team’s mindset because everyone approached the second map with the same attitude as the first, as if the first one didn’t happen."
Team Spirit lost to The Mongolz in their opening match of Group A at IEM Cologne 2024. Later, they also lost to G2 Esports and were eliminated from the tournament, finishing in 13th-16th place.