Team Liquid may have failed to hoist the Aegis at The International 2022 but right now, they're all smiles. They're currently leading the DPC 2023 Tour 1 for Western Europe. What makes this impressive is that this is the region considered having some of the best Dota 2 teams in the world. Even more impressive is the fact that they remain unbeaten so far.
Before the start of the new DPC season, Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen announced that he was stepping away from competitive play. That meant Liquid had to find someone not afraid to fill in the big role left by MATUMBAMAN. Fortunately for them, Team Secret made the decision to release Michał "Nisha" Jankowski. Liquid signed Nisha and it turned out getting him was indeed a wise move.
Dominating Opponents
Liquid's first match was against Nisha's old one. That match would be one of domination, all thanks to Michael "miCKe" Vu. In the first game, he had 13 kills on Morphling while 14 kills on Tiny in the second game.
Their second match would be against the current TI champions Tundra Esports. While the expectation was for Tundra to win, Liquid proved otherwise. Once again miCKe had a strong performance on Ursa with 16 kills while Nisha contributed nine kills on Leshrac. The second game was pretty much like the first with miCKe getting 13 kills and Nisha putting in 12 kills. To compare, Tundra only had a total of 11 team kills in the second game.
The third match was against Entity, which also demonstrated how one should dominate their opponent. Liquid now needs to win two more matches for a guaranteed spot at Lima Major.
In Danger
As we mentioned, Western Europe has some of the best teams in the world, so once Tour 1 ends, two are going to be demoted to Division II. As of now, those two teams are Nigma Galaxy and Team Secret.
Although it’s still too early to say that they’ll be the ones getting relegated to a lower division, it’s going to be an uphill climb for these two teams if they want to remain in Division I.
Standings
As of writing, the standings in Western Europe are:
- Team Liquid: 3-0
- Tundra Esports: 3-1
- Gaimin Gladiators: 2-1
- OG: 2-1
- Entity: 1-2
- Into The Breach: 1-2
- Nigma Galaxy: 0-2
- Team Secret: 0-3
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