Can ana help Team Liquid win at Riyadh Masters 2022?

Riyadh Masters 2022 is about to start and four of the participants will play with stand-ins. One of them is Team Liquid, who had to temporarily replace Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen with two-time TI champion Anathan “ana” Pham.

His contribution to Liquid may help the team win one of the biggest Dota 2 titles in the history of the game.

Who is ana

Ana is best-known for his OG seasons. Back in 2016, he joined Johan “N0tail” Sundstein’s newly created team and he went on to get a lot of exceptional results. The first was winning The Boston Major that same year. Then, in 2017, OG won The Kiev Major and finished in the top eight at The International.

But the biggest results came in 2018 and 2019. Both times, ana was instrumental in the team’s success and led his teammates to two consecutive Aegis of Champions titles.

One thing that has characterized ana throughout his Dota 2 career was his love-hate relationship with the game. He seems to love winning and he clearly enjoys making a big contribution to top teams, but he is said to hate everything else about it. Ana is the kind of player who will only join for The International and then disappear for an entire season.

It’s actually quite incredible just how good this player is. Usually, people train hard and without interruption to achieve top results. If you stop for several months and don’t follow what is happening at the pro level, you no longer understand the meta and your chances of winning are slim.

But ana somehow manages to stay away from the game and then return as if he had never left. His intuition about what needs to be done to win is second to none. And he will need to fully utilize it if Liquid are to win this tournament.

Team Liquid’s Chances at Riyadh Master 2022

The tournament features 10 teams and Liquid are not one of the strongest. In fact, they’re probably not even in the top four. But with ana’s help, they might finish the group stage in the top three and then make it to the semifinals. That’s as far as they are likely to go if everything works well.

Liquid’s group looks like this:

• Royal Never Give Up
• OG
• Team Liquid
• TSM
• Nigma Galaxy

The strongest teams in this group are OG and RNG. The third place is up for grabs and everyone has a roughly equal chance of getting it.

One thing that will be fascinating to watch at Riyadh Masters 2022 is the battle between ana and his former team, OG. Fortunately for ana, he is not facing his former teammates, just his former club, because OG’s current roster is an entirely new one.

Header: OG