Alliance finished 9th-12th at The International 10

Since the beginning of the year, Alliance was playing well during the DPC seasons but failed both times in the Majors. At third-party tournaments, the European team also did not surprise the fans with results. Nevertheless, Alliance received a direct invite to The International 10. Due to the negative background, the team was considered an outsider before the start of the tournament, so a good many expected that the team would be one of the first to leave TI10. Frankly speaking, that’s what happened. Alliance failed in the group stage and was only able to advance to the lower bracket of the playoffs. In the first round, the team defeated beastcoast, but in the second round, they lost to T1 and left The International 10, finishing in 9th-12th place. What Alliance has been doing during 2021 and why major changes are coming to the Alliance team soon - find out with us!

Bet on TI10 with 1xBet

Alliance is a legendary organization in Dota and all esports. The organization has rosters in almost all top disciplines, and many of them have very good results in the international context. In Dota, Alliance has a very rich history, as this team is the winner of The International 2013, as well as several other major international competitions. Alliance always had a Dota roster: when some players retire, others come in their place and strive to achieve great success. Now the team is formed of relatively young guys who do not have a huge number of different titles.

The Alliance includes representatives of three countries: Sweden, Bulgaria, and Belarus. Such a roster emerged between The International 9 and The International 10, as the team was trying to find a new way to move forward after a rather long track record of failure. The current Alliance team can hardly be called very strong or stellar, but at the same time, it is extremely promising and can potentially fight any Dota grandees. The team is currently represented by the following players.

• Nikolay Nikobaby Nikolov;
• Linus Limmp Blomdin;
• Gustav s4 Magnusson;
• Simon Handsken Haag;
• Artem Fng Barshak.

During the first season of Dota Pro Circuit Alliance was able to demonstrate a good game. The team chose several key matches and that way following the results of the league, they were able to gain a foothold in second place, which allowed them to advance to the group stage of the Singapore Major. Then Alliance looked pretty good and even claimed high places. However, contrary to all expectations, the team failed. The team was able to win only on four maps out of fourteen. Of course, this result was not enough to make it to the playoffs, and Alliance went home.

My apologies to the fans. Everyone was great at this tournament. I have never felt this kind of support, even though the results are terrible. I am devastated after this defeat. It will take me a little time to get a breath. But I am very grateful to all of you. Giving up is easy when things go to hell. The hardest part is to keep going. We will not retreat, we will not give up. We will fight until our last breath and a little after. Because this is the way of Alliance.

Alliance co-owner Jonathan Loda Berg after the team's defeat in the Major

The second season of DPC turned out to be extremely successful for Alliance, but also very scandalous. The team was able to finish the league with a score of 6: 1, take first place, get an invite to the playoffs of the Kiev Major, and assure themselves of a ticket to The International 10. Indeed, in the second season, Alliance played very cool, however, as it turned out, the team owned a series of victories to Peter ppd Daguerre, who joined the team as coach in early May.

Already on May 11, one of the reddit users published a post where he raised a very interesting topic. The user pointed out that the new coach of the Alliance roster spoke with the players during the match against Brame during the second season of the DPC. As evidence, he attached a video that was posted on the official Alliance YouTube channel. It means that the team did not hide this fact. Later it turned out that ppd took part in almost all the team's games within the regional league: they told them various moves, recorded timings and did other similar work, looking at the game from above.

The first person who draw attention to this post was the captain of the OG team Johan n0tail Sundstein. He said that this was a direct violation of the rules, and the Alliance players were real crooks, since they decided to get victories in such an unfair way.

It was never allowed to communicate with a coach while playing Dota. Zero respect for people who cheat. It was the same when they used macros and said that "this is not against the rules and "I still need to know when to use them." LOL.

Johan n0tail Sundstein

Then an esports analyst Ben Noxville Stinuizen interposed in that matter. According to him, three different sources told him that before the start of the second season of the DPC, the tournament operator changed the rules and allowed the use of a coach during official matches. The developers notified the esports organizations of this via email.

It turned out that the new rules were introduced only in the CIS and Europe. Moreover, they were initiated not by Valve, but by tournament operators - ESL and DreamHack, who, it cannot go unnoticed, did not inform the developers about this. In other regions, the DPC regulations remain the same. When the hype started, Valve ordered tournament operators to ban coaches from discord with the team, as well as help players in every possible way during official matches.

It is not clear how much the presence of ppd contributed to Alliance's victory in Season 2 of the DPC. However, most likely, the contribution was significant. After all, when the team began to play again five together, their results went down sharply. So, at the Kiev Major, the team first lost to PSG.LGD (0: 2), and then to Team Spirit (1: 2), after which they left the tournament and went home.

I will not go into the details of the team's inner workings, but in general the problem is still the same - it was more about preparation. If we compare this and the previous majors, then the reason of poor preparation is a little different. So in simple words - we just played badly. And to answer why is more our own business of the team. And we will work to ensure that this does not happen next time. We still have two chances, so to say, - ESL One Summer 2021 and TI10.

Artem Fng Barshak

By the way, at the first opportunity Alliance kicked ppd. Whether such a performance of the team is fair is a separate question, but this approach yielded results. Alliance made it to The International 10.

Bet on TI10 with 1xBet

In addition to the DPC cycle, Alliance took part in two commercial tournaments in 2021: ESL One Summer and ESL One Fall. At the first tournament, the team was able to demonstrate a decent result and took third place, although there were many strong teams among the participants. At the second tournament, Alliance failed, got out of the group somehow, and in the first playoff match lost to T1 (1: 2), after which she went home. So, within the framework of ESL One Fall Alliance, they entered only the top 8 (out of 12), although there were not many strong teams at the tournament.

Before the start of The International 10, Alliance was not a favorite, and not even mediocre. This is quite natural since, during the DPC cycle, the team showed an indistinct and, more importantly, absolutely unstable game. At third-party tournaments, the results of Alliance also do not inspire confidence, and inner power in this team has ceased to be felt. At the same time, the players are very optimistic and intend to show the best performance.

When I found out that we went to The International, I was very happy. But this feeling was quickly replaced by another. At first I just thought it would be cool to perform at The International, but now I want to perform well. I don’t want to just come and take the last place - I want to give my best 100%,

Linus Limmp Blomdin

Bookmakers gave an average odds for Alliance to win in The International 10 - 26.00. They gave the same score to Quincy Crew, T1 and Team Spirit. All of these teams were roughly in the middle of the list. For example, the odds for winning PSG.LGD were 2.62, and for winning SG e-sports or Thunder Predator - 251.00. Objectively, the team could qualify for the top 12 or, at best, top 8. Again, Alliance players did not agree with this distribution and claimed more impressive results.

A worthy result for us is top-1. The rest is either average or a failure. Most of the players strive for victory, and before preparing for Int, we will approach with just such an ideology, and we will see how it comes out. We have problems and we are working on them, but again the situations are different. Sometimes you fix one problem, but two new ones are revealed

Artem Fng Barshak

During the group stage of The International 10 things didn’t go as planned. The team lost to almost all serious opponents, including OG, Virtus.pro, T1, IG, Undying. The Alliance won only in a match with Thunder Predator, the worst team in the tournament. In general, everything was very bad. For the entire group stage, Alliance scored only four points, of course, it was not enough to advance to the upper bracket of the playoffs. So, the team had to settle for the lower one.

We are healing, we are still living. Of course, things are not going perfectly, but we haven’t taken off yet, so we are trying to fight. I would say that the start was bad, but we have already fixed the problems. Then there will be a question, how quickly we will get into shape. Obviously, it turned out that we are hardly ready, and there are also problems on Inta. We just accelerate as much as we can.

Artem Fng Barshak

In the first losers round Alliance's opponent was the Peruvian team beastcoast. Representatives of South America proved to be excellent in the group stage. It was not enough for them to break into the upper bracket of the playoffs. So in this confrontation, beastcoast was a clear favorite.

Regardless, Alliance prepared a solid strategy with stable heroes and implemented it well. As a result, the European team won a landslide victory, which gave the players confidence. The match was held in the best-of-1 format, so the victory on one Alliance map was enough to get through to the second losers round.

The group stage was not easy, but we learned a lot. The team was well prepared for the match against beastcoast, but the opponent did a great job as well. Yes, one of the elements of our preparation was playing on the lanes. In addition, we watched past playoff matches - including best-of-1 elimination matches. The team noticed that the participants in these games were very worried. For example, in the Quincy Crew vs. Aster match, it was very noticeable on both sides. So we discussed it and decided that we need to be less nervous and just play, have fun.

Alliance captain Gustav s4 Magnusson

In the second losers round, Alliance faced a team from Southeast Asia - T1. These guys were in very good shape and showed great play throughout The International 10. The European team had very little chance against this opponent. Alliance needed to jump over their heads to defeat the enemy, but this did not happen. S4 and company suffered a devastating defeat and left TI10 in 9th-12th place.

During the DPC cycle, Alliance earned $ 58,000 (28 in the first season and 30 in the second season). The team has earned 55 thousand dollars from commercial tournaments since the beginning of the year. Thus, for the year Alliance income from the prize money amounted to 113 thousand dollars. At TI10 Alliance earned a very impressive amount - 800.4 thousand dollars. So for the entire season, Alliance received 913.4 thousand dollars.

Bet on TI10 with 1xBet

For a very long time, Alliance has been in some kind of crisis. The team played very unstable. In the worst form, they were losing to everyone in a row, but in the best form, the team was still far from winning against the tops. Alliance cannot find their best strategy. Obviously, neither the players nor the organization are happy with this. The Alliance camp will see major changes next season. It is highly likely that the organisation's management will decide on a complete disbad of the team, and then accept some newcomers. However, there is always the possibility that the team will be built around some key player (captain). But it seems that there is no such player in Alliance. In any case, it will be interesting to watch this team in the future.