Lasse “Matumbama” Urpalainen’s Team Liquid will play the Dota 2 big tournament The International this weekend. A good eight million dollars is available for the winning team.
Jaakko Palvaila,
Otto Rönkä
Dota 2 World Champion Lasse “Matumbaman” A native of Urpa will play the last matches of his career this weekend in Singapore. The decision to quit will also take place after the end of The International tournament, unless something truly unexpected happens.
– If someone comes with a check for two million dollars and says that he will play for another year, then his mind could change. This is unlikely to happen when there is no such money in the game, Urpalainen says with a laugh to Urheilu.
According to Urpalainen, the biggest fire for the demanding profession of e-athlete has faded.
– I’m not really interested in playing anymore. The life of an e-sports professional has been seen and I no longer have the same passion to work, i.e. play. I feel like doing something else and finding a new calling.
However, before looking for a new direction, you still have to play Dota, because Team Liquid from Urpal has already advanced to the top four in the most lucrative e-sports tournament of the year.
When talking about The International, attention is easily drawn to the numbers. Money for the tournament’s prize pool is collected from fans through crowdfunding, and this year’s prize pool is slightly more than 18 million dollars. The winning team gets the lion’s share of the pot, a good eight million. The tournament is, of course, one of the most significant of the year in e-sports, with millions of spectators.
Urpalainen is one of the three Finnish world champions of the game. Urpalainen, who celebrated the TI championship with Team Liquid in 2017, has earned a little over 4.5 million dollars in prize money in his career, and the amount will increase by at least hundreds of thousands over the weekend.
However, it was close that Urpalainen’s retirement days would have already started last week. On Sunday, in the previous round of the playoffs, Team Liquid lost 0-1 in their match against Peru’s Thunder Awaken and also lost the decisive, second match.
However, Liquid turned the match into a victory and advanced to the top four in the tournament. ‘s commentary in Finnish about the final moments of the match even became an international viral hit and collected more than 100,000 views in a couple of days on the Twitch.tv service.
The Suomalaištahtih admits that rising from the brink of the abyss also required luck from the team.
– I have played tens or even hundreds of similar games where I know we are losing and even if the probability of success is low, something has to be tried. Usually the opponent comes, hits back and the game is lost and there is no epic story. This time it became an epic story, Urpalainen sums up the match.
On Saturday morning, in the semi-final of the lower playoff schedule, which will be played Finnish time, Team Liquid will face the Chinese Team Aster, who the team bowed to in the opening match of the playoffs.
– We were nervous before meeting Aster and it showed. However, we played the matches in the lower table much better and I think the look of the team is different now. Let’s see if our ideas work against them, says Urpalainen.
The International 2022, finals weekend
Saturday 29.10.
07.00 Team Liquid – Team Aster
10.00 Team Secret – Tundra
Sunday 30.10
06.00 Liquid/Aster match winner – Secret/Tundra match loser
09:30 final match
will broadcast The International’s final weekend live in Areena and E-eruhitu On the Twitch channel (you will switch to another service). You can also participate in the discussion about the tournament on social media using the subject tag #hope.
Read also: Lasse Urpalainen’s team from the brink of the grave to a miracle victory in the World Cup – The charm of ‘s commentators made it a viral hit