Through the first two weeks of 2021 Dota Pro Circuit’s upper division league, Team Spirit sat smack dab in the middle of the rankings with a 1-2 record after their first three matches.
Despite sitting in fourth place and remaining competitive even in their losses, management has decided to shake things up and bench Vitaly “so bad” Oshmankevich for the foreseeable future. Spirit will use Cascade support player Miroslaw Kolpakov as a stand-in until the team makes a final decision on its roster.
Spirt’s Dota manager Dmitry “Korb3n” Belov wants the team to handle its business and treat every game like it is a deciding match.
“It’s not about losing streak or winning streak, we lost two games to underdogs and put ourselves in a very difficult tournament position,” Korb3n said. “We had some serious clashes in the team, as a result, now we made a substitution. Why we did this is a very broad question and does not fit the format of the pre-match press conference.”
Barring any massive upsets, Virtus.pro and Natus Vincere will finish as the top two teams in the region, as both are 4-0 and VP has yet to lose a single game. Spirit is still in the mix for that third invitation to the Singapore Major, and in its first series with Miroslaw, improved to 2-2 with a 2-1 win over Live to Win.
“I do not divide the remaining matches into deciders and unimportant ones,” Korb3n said. “In our current situation, every game is a decider. The situation, however, has not changed, two weeks ago it was a strong team and now it still is.”
Because Spirit hasn’t earned any DPC points yet this season, there will be no penalty applied to the organization if the team does end up permanently swapping players before the Major.
