Gaimin Gladiators and Team Spirit are among the teams that didn’t survive the group stage at ESL One Birmingham.
The group stage of ESL One Birmingham 2024 is already completed – after an additional six rounds of tie-breakers for Group B that is. Even after these, two of last year’s heaviest hitters and formidable teams could not advance to the main event.
It seems like for these two teams, the hits just keep coming.
Poor performance and results have been marring Team Spirit’s reputation and dampening morale as of late. Last year’s TI champions’ (and a two-time championship team at that) journey at BetBoom Dacha Dubai 2024 came to an end following a 2:0 sweep in the lower brackets with a result of 5-6th place. Then, with one day left in the group stage of Elite League, Team Spirit found themselves eliminated alongside HEROIC and Blacklist International. The two-time TI championship team was sent packing in the group stage after registering just two series wins, ending in 13-14th place. Now, they couldn’t find a way to claw themselves out of the group stage at ESL One Birmingham 2024. The manager of Team Spirit, Dmitry “Korb3n” Belov, addressed the team’s departure from Elite League via his Telegram channel, saying that currently the team is out of shape. He also didn’t exclude the possibility of disbanding when and if the team needed it.
Gaimin Gladiators isn’t faring too much better. You couldn’t name a more iconic duo in the 2022-23 season GG and Grand Finals. This team was at the top of the class. They appeared in the grand finals of all three majors (incidentally taking the title and trophy for them all) and The International (with a second-place finish) last year – second to Team Spirit ironically. After starting the 2023-24 season with a bang and yet another 2nd place finish at ESL One Kuala Lumpur in December, the new year of 2024 seems to have been a complete dud for them. Consistently taking 5-6th place finishes at each even after, GG appears to have burned out with an 11-12th place result at ESL One Birmingham.
Talon and Shopify Rebellion also did not make the cut, although it feels much less surprising. There really isn’t much to report or say, neither of these teams has stood out at all and have no real results to show.
