Zai Reflects on Team Liquid’s Performance After Elimination From The Stockholm Major

The last Eastern European team remaining in this event, BetBoom Team secured a 2-0 victory over Team Liquid to move on to the next round of the lower brackets of the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022. Team Liquid has been eliminated from the Major as a result, finishing in 9th-12th place and hence depart without winning any prize money and more importantly Dota Pro Circuit points from this tournament.

Following Team Liquid’s elimination, offlaner Ludwig "zai" Wåhlberg commented on his expectations and performance for the Major. “We come in, wanting to win and expected to do well. But I think, as for my individual performance, it may be one of the worst ones I’ve had. So for me it is just about going back to the drawing board and regrouping for the next one,” he said.

Zai also stated that this tournament could be a learning experience for Team Liquid. “For any Dota player, TI is the end goal. But along the way, you wanna learn things, you wanna improve and I think we definitely have things that we can take from this event going forward. Hopefully, we will just regroup and become better,” he added.

Team Liquid currently has 390 DPC points this season and is currently amongst the Top 12 teams that will receive a direct invite to The International 11 (TI11). However, it will need to follow this up with a good performance in Tour 3 and the PGL Arlington Dota 2 Major to secure a direct invite to TI11.

BetBoom Team comes back to knock out Team Liquid

The series between BetBoom and Team Liquid was one of the closer ones we’ve had in the playoffs stage, with the two teams pulling out everything they had in the arsenal to gain an edge over one-another.

In the first game, Team Liquid found success with Lasse Aukusti "MATUMBAMAN" Urpalainen’s signature Lone Druid, to which BetBoom had no answers. MATUMBAMAN just forced down towers at will while the rest of his team constantly found pick-offs on the enemy side, forcing an early-GG from the Eastern European side.

BetBoom answered in kind in Game 2, utilizing Nikita "Daxak" Kuzmin’s Nature’s Prophet to expertly kite MATUMBAMAN’s farmed Razor, while Denis "Larl" Sigitov just mowed down Liquid with an incredible amount of DPS on his farmed Windranger. With MATUMBAMAN being kited in most teamfights, Liquid simply could not put together enough damage to take down BetBoom and hence had to concede Game 2.

Team Liquid turned to MATUMBAMAN’s Lone Druid once again in Game 3, but this time BetBoom had a game plan to handle the bear right from the get go. The team killed off MATUMBAMAN’s Spirit Bear even before the Bounty Runes spawned, putting him on the backfoot from minute 1.

Although MATUMBAMAN managed to recover and was outputting a ridiculous amount of damage, the rest of the team suffered, lagging behind in net worth. He simply couldn’t carry the game on his own, which forced Team Liquid to concede the game and sealed its elimination from the tournament.