Team Liquid will play the rest of Lima Major without Boxi

It’s been reported that a health emergency will force Team Liquid to play the upper bracket Final against Gaimin Gladiators without their position 4 player, Samuel “Boxi” Svahn.

It’s an extremely rare event in Dota 2 for a player to be replaced during a Major. But Valve understood the situation and has decided to allow Liquid to use Mathis “Jabbz” Friesel. This is not the famous Anucha “Jabz” Jirawong. That player is still in the race and represents Talon Esports.

What now

Nobody understands exactly what’s going on with Boxi. All we know is that he isn’t feeling well at the moment and will go back to Sweden to take care of his personal problems. But what about the team?

The matches ahead look really tough because we’re approaching the end of the tournament. Liquid need to compete against the world’s best teams and they will probably lose without their position 4 player.

The main problem is that Boxi is a high-level roamer who cannot be replaced with ease. On top of that, Liquid’s stand-in is not even a top professional. He’s just a pub player with little understanding of Dota 2, at least relative to this competitive level.

If Liquid can win the match against Gaimin Gladiators or even the lower bracket Final, the implication would be that they are vastly stronger than everyone else. Without Boxi, they’re playing at less than 70% of their capacity. If at 70% they somehow win the tournament, it means that absolutely nobody can beat them when they’re at their best.

The teams that are left in the race

After playing against Gaimin Gladiators in the upper bracket Final, Liquid will need to play one of these three teams: Talon, Entity, or Shopify Rebellion. And all three of them are strong. Of course, they can avoid the lower bracket Final but only if they win their match against Gladiators. This, however, is unlikely to happen.

Gladiators finished second in Western Europe with a record of 5 W – 2 L. The two teams that defeated them were Liquid and OG. But even in defeat, they proved to be really hard to beat.

Liquid actually lost a game against them, so they’ll have a really tough match in the upper bracket Final at the Lima Major. It remains to be seen if Jabbz can play Dota 2 at this level. He’s been an analyst for Liquid since 2020. But it’s a totally different thing to be in the arena.

Header: Team Liquid