The battle between donk and ZywOo for the status of the best player of 2026 has received another argument in favor of the Russian rifler. Analyst Duncan “Thorin” Shields drew attention to the number of MVPs and the team context of both superstars: in his assessment, donk’s achievements look especially impressive because Spirit have been criticized much more often throughout the season for roster shortcomings.
Thorin highlighted donk’s advantage
The analyst’s main argument was the number of individual awards in 2026. At the current point of the season, donk has three MVPs, while ZywOo has four, meaning the difference between them is minimal despite completely different conditions inside their teams.
donk has three MVPs compared to ZywOo’s four — and this is again a year in which ZywOo plays for one of the best teams in CS history,
while donk’s team is awkwardly assembled and regularly criticized for its incompleteness.
For Thorin, the team context becomes a key part of the comparison. He essentially emphasizes that donk remains close to ZywOo in the main individual awards without having such a stable and polished system around him.
Vitality give ZywOo a stronger platform
ZywOo is having another season with Vitality, a roster that has regularly fought for the biggest trophies in recent years. The Frenchman gets the opportunity to play alongside experienced and stable teammates, while the team itself has enough depth to remain competitive even when its main star does not have a perfect match.
This does not reduce ZywOo’s personal merits, but it adds context to the comparison. MVPs are almost always connected to a deep tournament run by the team, so Vitality’s stability automatically creates more opportunities to fight for such awards.
Spirit depend much more on donk
In Spirit’s case, the situation looks different. Throughout the year, the team has regularly been criticized for certain roles, instability, and the overall balance of the roster, but even under these conditions, donk continued to produce MVP-level tournaments and remain the central source of firepower.
That is why his three awards look so convincing in Thorin’s argumentation. The Russian rifler is not simply putting up good statistics — he regularly drags along the team result, on which the very possibility of even contending for MVP directly depends.
The difference is only one MVP
If we look only at the number of awards, the advantage still remains with ZywOo — 4:3. But one MVP over such a distance no longer creates the feeling of a large gap, especially when taking into account the difference between roles: ZywOo mainly works as an AWP player, while donk builds his impact through extremely aggressive rifling.
This is exactly what makes their rivalry one of the main individual storylines of the season. One remains the universal superstar of the most stable team, while the other creates enormous impact through aggression and mechanical superiority, often in less comfortable team conditions.
MVPs do not give the full answer
At the same time, the number of MVPs alone cannot definitively determine the best player of the year. Overall rating, consistency from tournament to tournament, level of opponents, playoff performances, and how big a specific player’s contribution was to team victories all need to be taken into account.
But in this context, donk’s statistics become even more interesting. If he continues to collect individual awards at roughly the same pace as ZywOo, the argument about the Frenchman’s stronger team will be used increasingly often in debates about the real value of their seasons.
The race for first place is getting even closer
Thorin’s position does not mean that the question of the best player of 2026 has already been decided. ZywOo still has more MVPs and continues to perform at an exceptionally high level, so it is important for donk to maintain his current pace until the end of the season.
But the main argument has already formed: donk remains close to ZywOo in the most prestigious individual awards even in a much less stable team environment. And if the gap between them remains minimal going forward, the context of Spirit and Vitality may become one of the key factors in the final discussion about the best player of the year.
