Team Spirit’s Counter-Strike 2 pro Leonid ‘chopper’ Vishnyakov claims Esports World Cup organisers asked him to take his Instagram story down.
The CS2 tournament is part of Esports World Cup Week 7 and is set to start tomorrow with a $1.25 million (£923k) prize pool.
The In-Game Leader filmed himself checking out the stage during practice before panning to the seating area and saying (translated):
“Here’s the arena, this is where they’ll be shouting ‘Falcons! Falcons!’
“Around 300 hired workers, just the usual Falcons fans, you know how it is.”
Now, chopper claims that Esports World Cup staff asked him to take it down because it would “hurt people’s feelings.”
Esports has always encouraged trash talk, but the organisers clearly didn’t take the allegations kindly, whether or not it was a joke.
Some have criticised the Esports World Cup for being set up to favour the Saudi Arabia-based Falcons, especially with the Club Championship
The prize awards the team that performs the best across the Esports World Cup’s multiple tournaments.
After buying top rosters across a lot of different esports, Falcons won last year’s event and are competing in 21 out of 25 events this year.
The 2025 Club Championship has a $27m (£19.9m) prize pool with Falcons currently leading despite one tournament win compared to Team Liquid’s three.
However, money doesn’t always buy success, which is why the Team Falcons CS2 team need to step up at the Esports World Cup.
Who are the favourites to become CS2 champions at the Esports World Cup?
Competition is looking fierce as to who will claim the $500k (£360k) top prize up for grabs for winning the tournament.
Team Spirit and chopper will be one of the favourites to win the Esports World Cup on CS2 betting sites.
The team, spearheaded by generational talent Danil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets, have already won IEM Cologne and BLAST Bounty this month.
Their IEM victory ended the remarkable streak of Team Vitality, who won seven major events in a row earlier this year.
The streak, which included 37 consecutive best-of-three victories, has many questioning whether this Vitality squad are all-time greats.
The roster, including British star William ‘mezii’ Merriman, will be keen to return to winning ways at this big-money tournament.
And as previously mentioned, this will also be an important tournament for the CS2 roster of Team Falcons.
The organisation have repeatedly signed exciting talents, like Maksim ‘kyousuke’ Lukin, but haven’t been able to work well as a team.
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.