Team Secret fail to Secure Arlington Major invite

A few weeks ago, Team Secret seemed to be on their way to relegating to Division II of Dota Pro Circuit’s Western European region.

However, excellent results in their last three matches took them from seventh place in the league to fourth-fifth place. And since WEU has four available tickets for the Arlington Major, the fourth place team was decided by a tiebreaker. There was only one match: Team Secret versus Entity. And Secret lost.

Team Secret’s disappointing result

The result of the Bo3 match between Secret and Entity was actually somewhat predictable. The two teams had met three weeks before on June 25. Entity won that match with a score of 2-1. Their Clockwerk pick proved to be highly effective in games two and three and helped them triumph despite being one map down.

In the tiebreaker, something very similar happened, except Entity chose a different hero to get the job done: Puck. Secret won the first game with this hero but then ignored it, neither picking it themselves nor banning it.

Entity chose to pick Puck twice and despite having to play long games against heroes like Lifestealer and Terrorblade with some really bad late-game carries, they triumphed. And it’s quite impressive how they did it.

In both cases, the game was more or less even for the first 30 – 40 minutes And then a bad fight changed the situation completely.

Usually, such defeats occur in League of Legends, a game in which there’s no buyback or glyph to protect your buildings. But it seems that Dota 2 can be unforgiving at times as well, and Secret will miss the last Major of the Dota Pro Circuit because of it.

Greater implications

Now that Secret have lost their final chance of scoring enough points at a DPC tournament to secure a top 12 position in the rankings table and a direct invite to The International 2022, the battle for the one remaining spot reserved for WEU will be extremely fierce.

The strongest teams that will compete in the regional qualifier are Secret and Nigma Galaxy. It seems that fate has brought Clement “Puppey” Ivanov and Kuro “KuroKy” Takhasomi into the same arena, and only one of them can win. For the loser, there will be a second chance, in the Last Chance Qualifier, as long as both teams will be in the Final.

Historically, KuroKy has had a big advantage in the battles against Puppey, simply because he knows his style very well. But his victory is not guaranteed.

Header: Team Secret