Tekcac: Disneyland® Paris Major Closed Qualifiers Day 1 Predictions

The severe battles for the opportunity to play at the MDL Disneyland Paris Major continue in Europe, South America and CIS. The Playoffs begin today, and we will find out the names of five Major participants in the capital of France. WePlay! Dota 2 caster Jaroslav "Tekcac" Petrushin shared his expectations from the Friday’s matches.

Virtus.pro vs Gambit Esports

The first day of Qualifiers went as expected. Virtus.pro “walked through” Group A without defeat, and Natus Vincere made a series of mistakes against Uvajenie on the second map in Group B, but still came out as winners of the series.

Today’s schedule is rather strange, so we will have to watch multi-stream in CIS again. There will be a match between Virtus.pro and Gambit Esports at the top of the “Winners”. The team made a little mistake in the first match, after Afoninje’s return from WESG, and lost to ex-Pavaga with a score of 2:1. But then the guys gathered in “Losers'” match and took “2 to 30” without any problems from the new/old team FlyToMoon. I watched FTM in Open Qualifiers, and they looked pretty good there, managed to get through the first “circle” without any defeats. To be honest, I expected more from them. Well, what to say about VP? This team was in every Grand Final of the current DPC season, and obviously, Gambit isn’t the opponent who can beat them now. Prediction: 2:0 for VP.

Natus Vincere vs Team Empire

This match will be the anniversary (the sixtieth) in the confrontation of these teams. At the moment, the history of their meetings is equal: 29 wins for NAVI and 28 wins for Empire (there were also three draws). The last meeting ended with Empire’s victory 2:0, but there was a rather unusual situation. Empire was beaten out from WePlay! Tug of War: Radiant, after losing the series to The Pango, but the last chose to play ESL Qualifiers on the second tournament day,  and they were disqualified. Team Empire used the second chance in full and was able to reach the Super Final, where was able to take two maps from NiP in the Bo7 match.

And now about Natus Vincere - they were very motivated to come out at least in the Top-6 at Major, but couldn't deal with J.Storm in the first match for elimination. The defeat was very annoying, but the “yellow-blacks” understand now that there are only 2 Majors left and they need to “farm” points for an invite to The International 2019. Now they have to play at full capacity. I’ll bet 2:1 for NAVI in this series.

Team Secret vs Ninjas In Pyjamas

The first Playoff matches are for reaching Major in the European Qualifiers. Let's start with the battle between Secret and NiP. Ninjas showed a rather dull game at DreamLeague Season 11 Major. They played against Goblin Legs in this Qualifiers and managed to lose one map. Then they tried to beat out Team Liquid but had to play the match for the second place against Alliance. NiP has adrenaline in this match and took the series 2:0. If we talk about Team Secret - it’s the Top-2 team of the world in the DPC at the moment. And even though they couldn’t reach the next final in DreamLeague, Puppey and Co. gave us one of the best matches against VP. Team Secret played the same way as VP in the CIS, without any loose - the series in Winners' match was against OG with Ana at the same time. I’m expecting the easy game for Team Secret in this series and the first slot to Disneyland.

Team Liquid vs OG

It’s time for “Liquids” to take on the DPC points farm because the most stable team (in terms of the roster) has a little more than 500, which is not enough for the TI9 invite. Well, let's remember what happened on DreamLeague. Team Liquid was one of the main favourites, but after losing to Team Secret, something happened to them, and they lost the Keen Gaming series. As a result - the match in Bo1 for elimination. It would seem like an easy game against Chaos EC. Thus, the game ended in 20 minutes, but in favour of the team from South America. There were reasonably quick matches in the groups yesterday, but at the same time, both series were played with three maps.

Ana finally returned to OG, and he had no deaths and made a total of 31 frags in the first match. But there is one “BUT”: it was a match against the mix called SexyAsF. In the very first serious battle against Secret, though they were able to “snap", the series was played “dry”. In the match for second place they had to play against The Final Tribe, and there OG had to sweat, although it seemed to be easy to beat the squad from Sweden. Although the “king” has returned to OG, I think the series will end with a 2:1 score in favour of Team Liquid.