Spirit Academy have filed a protest following their defeat in the second round of the open qualifier for the CIS Minor.

Spirit Academy, who are currently ranked 78th in the world, were denied the chance to attend a CIS Minor for the second time in a row after being defeated by FONTAN 16-11 in the Round of 128.

After the match, Spirit Academy approached CEVO, the company in charge of the qualifier, and filed a protest, claiming that two of FONTAN's players, Egor "⁠darkinho⁠" Lobanov and Sergey "SER1Y" Oleynikov are currently barred by FACEIT.

1uke and co were defeated in the second round of the qualifier

Aleksey "⁠1uke⁠" Zimin took to VK.com, Russia's biggest social media platform, to vent his frustration, and provided links to the alleged FACEIT accounts of darkinho and SER1Y (who plays under the alias "fix").

Contacted by HLTV.org, Team Spirit manager Ruslan "Eddieh" Buhryn revealed that CEVO told his team that it could take over 24 hours for them to review this case. Even if FONTAN are disqualified, Spirit Academy will not be able to reclaim their spot in the tournament, which is running on a tight schedule and is already down to just 16 teams - FONTAN being one of them.

darkinho's team, who will take on mimimishki in the Round of 16, are just two wins away from securing a spot at the CIS Minor, which will run later this month, in Bucharest.

In a tweet, Spirit ironically applauded the "excellent choice" to have CEVO run the qualifiers for the CIS Minor, which they described as the "most important tournament of the season".

HLTV.org has reached out to CEVO for comment.