Steven R. August 15, 2019
Lasse "MATUMBAMAN" Urpalainen is not off to a great start at The International 2019.
Chaos Esports Club started the event with a rough 1-5 opening day in the group stage. That would stink all on its own, but insult was added to injury in their second set of the day opposite Team Liquid as Matumbaman was brutalized at the hands of his former team.
The first game opened in ugly fashion for the jilted midlaner. Laning opposite his replacement Aliwi "w33" Omar, he was thrashed in lane by the deadly Templar Assassin. Liquid took the slow road to victory, but that just meant that w33 had more opportunities to slap around Matumbaman. The game ended at the 39-minute mark with Matumbaman sporting a sad 0-10 K/D while w33 stood at a gaudy 21-1, with eight of those kills coming at Matumbaman’s expense.
Game two was significantly shorter, but was equally rough for Matumbaman.
Liquid captain Kuro "KuroKy" Salehi Takhasomi pulled off some of his signature last-pick magic by locking in Meepo for w33. That would’ve been rough for Chaos under any circumstances given their lack of appropriate counters, but with w33 arguably being the single best Meepo player in the world it essentially decided the game before it even started.
Though Matumbaman managed to avoid repeated deaths, he couldn’t do anything to hold back w33. This resulted in a quick 22-minute win for Liquid, which w33 closed out with a rampage.
How did Chaos Esports Club and Team Liquid’s Dota 2 team do on day one of TI9?
Team Liquid wasn’t the only team that roughed up Chaos Esports Club on the opening day of TI9.
The team kicked off the group stage with a series against PSG.LGD. Though there isn’t any sort of ugly history between the two teams, the end result was the same as PSG.LGD had little trouble taking a 2-0 win. Chaos managed to get on the board by splitting their series with Alliance.
They still have five more group stage series to play in, so there is ample time for them to dust off and get back on their proverbial horse.
While Liquid looked exceptional against Chaos, they were actually quite shaky on day one. Playing against North American underdogs Newbee, Liquid were stunned by a pair of lopsided defeats. They last faced Team Secret and went 0-2 in the process to finish the day 2-4.
Liquid plays two series tomorrow against Mineski and PSG.LGD. Chaos Esports Club will play just one series, also facing Mineski.