MATUMBAMAN and zai will continue to play together, but now they will wear the Team Liquid jersey.
Coming both from Team Secret, where they played through the previous DPC year, Lasse”MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen and Ludwig “zai” Wåhlberg will fight for a spot at TI11 with Team Liquid. But while for zai this marks his first stint under the Liquid banner, for Matu this will be his second time with the organization with which he lifted the TI7 trophy above his head.
MATUMBAMAN was removed from the Team Liquid roster in June 2019, ahead of TI9, when the line-up from back then felt that it was necessary to make a drastic change in the safe lane in order to have a better shot at claiming the Aegis of Champions once more. Liquid ended up placing second at The International 2019, but for Matumbaman that year continued in a rather disastrous fashion, finishing bottom two at the same TI with Chaos Esports.
His full redemption story was written during his time at Team Secret, which he joined at the end of 2019. During the online-only tournaments era caused by the pandemic, MATUMBAMAN won seven straight tournaments from the carry position with Secret, dominated the European region in the 2021 DPC and reached top three this October at TI10.
While Team Secret is now down to three members, Matu and zai joining Liquid boosts this team’s roster to a total of seven players.
Team Liquid current roster:
Lasse “Matumbaman” Urpalainen
Micke “miCKe” Vu
Max “qojqva” Broecker
Samuel “Boxi” Svahn
Ludwig “Zai” Wåhlberg
Tommy “Taiga” Le
Aydin “iNsania” Sarkohi
coach: William “BlitZ” Lee
Most likely, the roster won’t remain in this formula and in the next couple of days, before the roster lock deadline from November 21, some of the current Liquid players will be announced to have departed from the team.
headline picture courtesy of Team Liquid via Twitter
