Ninjas in Pyjamas took a shocking victory over Virtus.pro to kick off its PGL Astana run, but can it get another win over Team Spirit?
PGL Astana is off to a wild start in terms of upset victories, with Ninjas in Pyjamas’ win over Virtus.pro being foremost among them. According to the bookmakers, this wasn’t a particularly surprising turn, but this was still a fringe top-10 team being defeated by a fringe top-40 team.
But of course, Counter-Strike fans have seen these group stage upsets on many occasions. The question now is if NiP can string together enough of them to advance out of the group stage. So can NiP get the better of Team Spirit?
Virtus.pro vs NiP – HIGHLIGHTS – PGL Astana 2025 | CS2
Team Spirit and Ninjas in Pyjamas will play in a best-of-three match on May 11, 2025 as part of PGL Astana’s group stage. Both teams have a 1-0 record in the group stage so far and need to get three wins in five matches to advance. Three losses results in elimination.
Team Spirit has been consistently strong in 2025, despite losing its spot as Counter-Strike’s top-ranked team. The Russian squad has finished in the top three of each tournament it has played to this point in the year. That includes a first-place finish in BLAST Bounty Spring and a second-place finish in IEM Katowice. It kicked off its run in PGL Astana with a win over GamerLegion.
The full Team Spirit roster is in attendance for PGL Astana:
Team Spirit has a winning record across all maps in 2025, though it’s not far off from being 50-50 on Ancient and Mirage. That said, the team has been fearsome on Dust 2, going 14-2. Spirit consistently bans Inferno.
Ninjas in Pyjamas still has name value in Counter-Strike, but hasn’t had anything to show for it in some time. The team has been competing in tier-two regional leagues and qualifiers across 2024 and 2025. It hasn’t really been doing so successfully, either. Winning PGL Astana’s European Qualifier was its biggest victory of 2025 so far, and Virtus.pro is the best team NiP has beaten in several months.
Here is the current Ninjas in Pyjamas roster:
Inferno, Train, and Nuke have been Ninjas in Pyjamas’ best maps of 2025 and the team has a strongly winning record on all three. That said, NiP’s wins against VP came on Train and Ancient.
NiP and Team Spirit have not faced off in 2025. Their last match came in the Shanghai Major’s European RMR tournament, with Spirit winning that match 2-0. However, Ninjas in Pyjamas dropped four of the five players from that roster, so this is effectively a fresh matchup.
Spirit vs GamerLegion – HIGHLIGHTS – PGL Astana 2025 | CS2
Team Spirit is a massive favorite against Ninjas in Pyjamas, to an almost prohibitive degree. NiP is a huge 6.73 underdog while Spirit stands at 1.1. While NiP scored an upset win over Virtus.pro, the betting sites clearly aren’t biting on NiP being a world beater in PGL Astana.
Team Spirit should take a clean, quick win over Ninjas in Pyjamas. NiP winning against Virtus.pro is a surprise and shows some signs of life, but Team Spirit is on another level. NiP has a lot to do in terms of proving itself capable of hanging with them.
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