The International 11 starts on October 15 and 20 teams will try to claim the Aegis of Champions. Some of the participants, such as Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, and OG, have already won the tournament at least once. But others, like PSG.LGD and Team Secret, haven’t. And this is the only big trophy that’s missing from their collection.
Historically, The International has been a very unusual Dota 2 tournament, in the sense that the winners are often unpredictable teams. In the last three editions, the tournament was won by underdogs.
Of course, knowing what we now know, we wouldn’t call OG and Team Spirit underdogs. But when they won for the first time, nobody gave them a chance. And with this in mind, we’re trying to answer the question regarding who the favorites are knowing full well that the winning team might not be among them.
TI11 Favorites
On paper, the best teams in the world right now are PSG.LGD, Team Spirit, OG, Royal Never Give Up, and probably Entity. Any one of them could be the winner of The International 2022.
PSG.LGD deserve the title more than anyone else. This team has finished the tournament in the top four no less than five times since 2015. And they played in two Grand Finals, which they lost with a score of 2-3. After so many disappointments, they 100% deserve to win their first Aegis of Champions.
One thing that makes PSG.LGD the number one favorite is the fact that they haven’t made any significant roster changes after TI10. So they are competing at TI11 with the same roster that nearly won TI10. This gives them an edge over most of the other competitors.
Another team that plays at this event with an unchanged roster is Team Spirit. They’ve had a lot of success this season and, naturally, after winning The International 10 last year, the players decided to stick together.
The other three teams on this list, OG, RNG, and Entity, are hard to ignore because they’ve demonstrated exceptional abilities in Dota Pro Circuit 2021–2022.
OG won a Major, RNG have a lot of former TI finalists on their roster (they’re essentially the former PSG.LGD roster), and Entity dismantled a very strong Team Secret in the Grand Final of Western Europe’s Qualifier. On top of that, Entity also have one of the best carry players in the world, Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko, and finished in the top six at PGL Arlington Major and ESL One Malaysia.
Header: PSG.LGD