Coach Chu replaces Misha in OG’s roster ahead of 2023 DPC Spring Tour

The movements in the different esports organizations worldwide continue. However, it’s time for OG Esports, which has decided to make a somewhat unusual change in its Dota 2 lineup.

In the afternoon of March 6, OG announced a role swap between Mikhail “Misha” Agatov and Evgenii “Chu” Makarov. All this after the team failed to qualify for the Dota 2 Lima Major 2023.

OG replaces Misha with Coach Chu

In a somewhat unexpected but unusual move, OG Esports announced a change in its Dota 2 lineup for the rest of the season. It is the departure of support Misha, and the team’s coach, Chu, will replace him.

With this move, none of the players will leave the organization. For all there will be is an exchange of roles, where Misha leaves the active game, and Chu takes his place in the starting lineup.

Misha said:

“I thought about it a lot and couldn’t ignore the moments when I trained before. I immensely enjoyed it and felt that all my Dota knowledge was utilized 100%.

The most important one for me is OG. We will be much stronger if I can help structure the practice process, talk about improving the game, help the team, deal with drafts, etc.”

Different situations gave rise to this decision

While Misha helped OG to achieve outstanding results throughout the DPC Tour 2022, the player missed many LAN events due to problems with his visa. Let’s remember that the player is Russian, and there are many restrictions on citizens of this nationality due to Ukraine’s invasion of his country. This absence of Misha meant that OG had to play different LAN tournaments with a substitute.

Now, in 2023, the problems regarding the visa have not affected OG at all. However, the decision to change this role was due to the team’s poor performance and failure to qualify for the first Major of the year. The fact of not traveling to Peru made OG sit down and analyze each of the options they had to improve their situation, and they concluded that they had to change the lineup as soon as possible.

Over the past few months, we have seen a dip in Misha’s performance on the Dota 2 servers. This has caused many fans of the team to start criticizing the player. In addition, OG’s track record without Misha has been very good, which could also be why the organization decided to make the change.

This will not be the first time Misha has taken over as OG coach. In 2021 he was the coach of the team that participated in The International, which finished in the top eight places. After that, the team did a massive lineup reshuffle, and Misha was part of it.

The fact that Misha is still the team’s coach shows the extent to which OG holds his Dota 2 knowledge and opinions in high regard, and Misha agrees to change positions seems to demonstrate his regard for the group.

Header: OG