Team Spirit have announced that Boris ‘Magixx’ Vorobiev has been removed from their active lineup, in favour of 17-year-old former Nemiga rifler, Ivan ‘zweih’ Gogin.
Spirit shared the benching of Magixx in a heartfelt statement, saying they were “truly grateful” for his six years on the roster, which he joined when he was only 16 years of age. The org went on to wish the Russian the best of luck for his future.
zweih was later announced, confirming weeks of media speculation that the Russian organisation were targeting the young rifler, who has impressed in a Nemiga roster that reached Stage 3 of the BLAST.tv Austin Major. zweih has averaged a 1.12 rating in 2025, fitting the bill for a Spirit roster looking to improve the depth of their firepower in the second half of the year.
Magixx: From Grand-Final god to benched
Magixx is benched as a major winner, having delivered an incredible 1.58-rated performance in the Grand Final of the Perfect World Shanghai Major, however, that performance was a huge outlier that perhaps led to Magixx remaining in Spirit’s active roster.
In an episode of Thorin and Mauisnake’s podcast, Snake and Banter, Magixx reflected that he wasn’t sure himself where the performance came from, stating, “Actually, I’ve been thinking and reflecting about it, and I couldn’t find an explanation. If you can say that it was a lifegame, well, it was a great time to have one, playing in the Major final.”
That form was never recaptured in what has been a middling year for Magixx and Spirit. Magixx leaves Spirit’s active roster following a 0.90-rated performance against MOUZ in the BLAST.tv Austin Major quarter-final, a stat-line much more aligned with his median than Shanghai.
Why Team Spirit needed a change
With several teams upgrading their raw mechanical strength in what has been termed a ‘firepower era,’ Spirit have suffered despite having an unprecedented rifling superstar in Danil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets.
While donk has shown no signs of slowing down, the roster has suffered from a lack of depth with anchor/lurker Myroslav ‘zont1x’ Plakhotia a distant second in the statline.
While Magixx’s Shanghai performance will live long in the memory, it could never be a sustainable recipe to support donk in the server and bring Spirit more success; instead, they have now looked further afield to Nemiga to fill the gap in their capabilities.
After winning the BLAST Bounty Season 1 in January, it looked like Spirit were on course to cement their major win with more dominance, but the roster has been outmatched by a Vitality who cemented their era in Austin.
Vitality’s generational run started with them dismantling Spirit in a 3-0 victory at the Katowice final. Since then, Vitality has defeated Spirit two more times in Bo3s. As if symbolic of the roadblock that Vitality’s star-studded squad represents, Spirit’s only trophy after BLAST Bounty came in Astana, which Vitality did not attend.
To put it frankly, since Katowice, the discussion surrounding Spirit has not been if Spirit can challenge Vitality, but how close they are to MOUZ or Falcons.
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Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.