Team Spirit vs Team Aster Prediction: LAN experience to prove key factor for Team Spirit winning

One of the most important international Dota 2 tournaments, the PGL Arlington Major 2022, will finish on Sunday, August 14. Team Spirit and Team Aster will face off in the lower bracket final.

PGL Arlington Major 2022 is a major international cyber-sports tournament in Dota 2. The tournament in the U.S. will be the second and final major event of the 2021/22 DPC season. Top 17 teams from around the world will compete for the prize pool of $500,000 and 4,570 DPC points from August 4th till August 14th.

Team Spirit: a familiar opponent

Team Spirit is having a great time in this major, we can see that the Russian team is starting to gain some momentum by the next TI11. The players continue to bog down in games with PSG.LGD, but let's be honest, only the Spirit players can impose something on the Chinese champion in the Grand Final. But! Thoughts about PSG.LGD should be put aside, as the world champions need to pass their peers, Team Aster, first. The teams faced off twice in this tournament, but the main advantage of the Russians is the LAN experience, which will put a lot of pressure on the opponent. It's too far away stage of the international tournament for them.

Team Spirit is really gaining momentum. The TI10 champions did not show the best playing form back in July, but starting with the Riyadh Masters 2022 tournament, the guys picked it up. The strongest team in the world was in fact what it is now only in January and February, where in the CIS league it simply tore everyone apart. The first problems came as part of the spring tour.

But at the first international event of the year, Spirit failed. 9-12th place was really deserved, because what the CIS team demonstrated at that tournament was a collapse, which was emphasized by the players themselves, promising not to make such mistakes in the summer. It is noteworthy that the winner of the TI10 only in the major in the U.S. was able to guarantee a place in the next int.

And Team Spirit players were selected to the second major from the third line of the summer regional league, where they lost first to VP, and then to NaVi in the replay. The game of this team continues to be very unstable, so it was important for the guys to improve it right in the UAE, which they did, reaching the final of the Arabian tournament, where they lost to PSG.LGD with a score of 0-2.

Team Aster: an attempt at revenge

Team Aster has long been written off in this tournament. Right after the team's loss to Team Spirit (0-2) in the winners' semifinals. But the squad spitefully made it to the decisive game day, sending their Entity (2-1) and OG (2-1) opponents home before themselves. Both meetings in the losers' group were extremely difficult and followed the same scenario: the first map was an easy win for Team Aster, the second was safely drawn, and on the third map, something interesting happened, but most importantly a victory for the Aster players.

Team Aster won Group B with confidence and made it to the top 3 of the tournament in the playoffs, which is a historic achievement for a young team. They had some problems in the knock-out stages of the internationals, but it looks like Team Aster worked on their mental state, although the stage and prime time continue to play a cruel joke on them, especially considering the opponent that crushed them a couple of days ago.

Before heading to the U.S. major, the guys from Team Aster decided to give themselves a little warm-up and participated in closed qualifications for the August major international tournament ESL One Malaysia 2022. Notably, of all the tops, only Team Aster players volunteered to participate in this mini-tournament. The slot, as expected, went to them without any problems.

Team Aster players followed suit with PSG.LGD and played the summer round of the DPC league without stress. On the whole, Team Aster finished well in the final league, securing second place in the replay. But more important for the team is successful performance in the LAN tournaments, the Major, and ESL One Malaysia 2022, where the guys should sail through these qualifications. This will help them feel confident on the LAN, because so far they are the kings of the online, and the team has big problems on the stage.

Team Aster had a mixed success in the spring tour, especially comparing to them in January: the team won second place in the first DPC league, in the replay the team defeated the resistance from RNG. Then the guys reinforced the result with a championship at the Intel World Open Beijing, which was not an incredible sensation, but the result was still unexpected. After the Chinese New Year, the players began to perform more relaxed. Extremely poor performance in the regional finals of the DPC leagues (3rd place out of 4), then not reaching the finals of the OGA Dota PIT Season 6: China (3rd place). All that doesn't change the main point — Team Aster remains one of the main favorites to start the third cycle of the 2021/22 season, the more so in the second regional final.

Team Aster is one of China's youngest teams, formed in late 2018 and already a top team in its region. Last season was a mixed bag for the guys; if we evaluate their results within the Chinese region, they are very cool: vice-champions of the first DPC league, champions of the second DPC league, champions of two seasons of i-League 2021. Even PSG LGD can't boast the same results in China, but on the international scene, Aster played just awful: only 9-12th place in the two majors in Singapore and Kyiv, an unsatisfactory result in TI10 as well — 13-16th place. You can look for excuses, they didn't play in a full squad in Singapore, and at TI10 the whole team suffered from COVID, but the fact is that nobody makes concessions to the top Chinese team.

Something had to be done and the bosses of the organization made two substitutions in the squad: Ori, who moved from Vici Gaming, will play in position two, and Siamese.C, who spent the last season in the Aster Aries youth team, has arrived in the fifth position.

Head-to-head encounters

The opponents played each other only in this major, but they played twice. In the group stage, the opponents settled for a draw, but Team Spirit didn't leave a chance for the guys from Team Aster in the semifinals. 

Expert Betting Tips

Team Spirit will win this match with a Handicap (-4.5) Frags at odds of 1.85 at 1xbet.

In this match, Total Frags will be less than 116.5, the odds on that are 1.77 at 22bet.

We believe that Team Spirit will beat their opponent again with Maps Handicap (-1.5), and the odds on that are 3.00 at Bet365.