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An image of departing Team Spirit player magixx and his replacement zweih.

Team Spirit have benched magixx and replaced him with zweih (Images: Team Spirit).

Team Spirit bench magixx, acquire rising star zweih as replacement

Magixx departs Team Spirit's active lineup after six years with the organisation and being an instrumental part in their Shanghai Major victory.

Russian Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) powerhouse Team Spirit have benched longtime anchor rifler Boris “magixx” Vorobiev and acquired Ivan “zweih” Gogin from Nemiga Gaming as his replacement, the team announced on Monday (6 July). 

This move comes after a disappointing 5th-8th place finish for Spirit at the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 in June, where the team failed to claim a second straight Major title to add to their first from the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 last December. 

While Spirit entered the year as the defending Major champions–and won two more trophies from BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 in January and PGL Astana 2025 in May–the team have long been under pressure to improve around superstar rifler Danil “Donk” Kryshkovets as Team Vitality took over as hands-down the best squad in the world.

Magixx was among the players perceived to be on the chopping block, having only managed a middling 1.03 rating this year. 

With that said, magixx did have his moments of stellar play, with his biggest performance with Spirit coming in the grand finals of the Shanghai Major versus FaZe Clan. Magixx notched a total of 69 frags–notably tied with Donk–and 10 assists on 39 deaths for a stellar 1.58 rating to help Spirit claim their first Major trophy. Unfortunately, magixx had been unable to maintain a consistent performance in 2025.

Magixx departs Spirit's active lineup after six years with the organisation, having joined the team in September 2019 for his first real foray into professional Counter-Strike. 

"We are truly grateful to Boris for all those six years he has spent in Team Spirit. He`s been with us during several crucial stages of the roster formation and hugely affected the very shaping of our unique philosophy. Back in 2019 Boris joined us as a gifted but inexperienced player. Throughout these years he has been constantly growing and developing both as a person and as a professional cyberathlete. This eventually led Team Spirit to our most significant victories at various CS tournaments," Spirit said in their announcement of the benching of magixx.

“We`ll never forget the enormous contribution magixx has made to Team Spirit milestone achievements, playing an impressive number of 1050 maps in total. We wish Boris success in his further esports career. We will keep track of his brilliant achievements and celebrate his victories.”

Coming in as magixx's replacement will be the rising 17-year old zweih, who is coming off a breakout year with Nemiga. Zweih led the team to an unlikely appearance in Stage 3 of the Austin Major, where he put up stellar 1.21 and 1.28 ratings in Stage 1 and 2, respectively. Not only did zweih lead Nemiga in terms of rating during their run, he also recorded the best performance of any player in Stage 1 and 2 of the Austin Major.

Zweih is set to make his debut with Spirit in Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Cologne 2025 on 23 July. Spirit will face off against 23 other world class teams in IEM Cologne for a cut of the US$1 million prize pool.