Four teams remain in the upper bracket of the MDL Disneyland Paris Major, and each of them will try to make some noise as the tournament reaches its conclusion.
Those four teams—Evil Geniuses, Ninjas in Pyjamas, OG, and Team Secret—all have vastly different experience levels during this Dota Pro Circuit season, however.
EG and Secret have both placed highly in previous Majors this season. Secret won The Chongqing Major and EG came in third at that same event. Both teams have already qualified for The International 2019, which makes any top placing a bonus for them.
NiP placed fourth at the first Major of the season, The Kuala Lumpur Major. But since then, they’ve been floating by in Minor events and suffered an early elimination at the DreamLeague Season 11 Major. They have a chance here to push through teams like Secret, who have prevented them from making deep runs before.
Unlike EG and Secret, NiP are fighting for a chance to lock in their TI9 trip. If they can place within the top three, they’ll earn enough points to qualify and can play out the remainder of the season without that pressure on their shoulders.
TI8 champions OG are the last team sitting in the upper bracket. After taking an extended break from competitive Dota, OG have had a rough run. Up to this point, the team failed to qualify for any Major event and were eliminated in fifth from both Minor appearances.
But in their 2018-19 Major debut, they’ve put together a solid base of wins to get this far. Beating both Fnatic and Virtus Pro in 2-0 sweeps shows that they’re still ready to compete at the highest level, but that will be tested when they face another juggernaut in Secret.
Regardless of who comes out on top heading into the winners bracket finals, all of these teams are sitting in good positions going into the final stretch of the DPC season.
