After both teams were knocked out of the Manila Major Main Event earlier this week, it seems another Team Secret and Evil Geniuses shuffle is on the rise. This time it was the departure of Saahil “Universe” Arora from Team Secret, and he will once again return to Evil Geniuses. Team Shuffles are somewhat common in all eSports titles, but Dota 2 seems to yield the greatest shuffle news come every major tournament, and it somehow always revolves around the same few teams.
The news surfaced via Twitter yesterday when Team Secret owner Kemal Sadikoglu made the announcement.
Manila update is that @UniverseDota abandons @teamsecret and goes back to @EvilGeniuses. Full story click here https://t.co/nUcKC9QQn0
— Kemal Sadikoglu (@ksadikoglu) June 9, 2016
“Earlier this week, Saahil ‘Universe’ Arora confirmed with the Team Secret organization that he would be leaving the Dota 2 team with immediate effect. As a result of the unexpected news from Universe, the team will now be forced to proceed through the open qualifiers later this month on the 21st of June for Valve’s International 2016.”
It gets better. Universe will be replaced by Kanishka “BuLba” Sosale, a former Evil Geniuses player.
“In preparation for the upcoming challenge, we are delighted to announce that we will be introducing Kanishka ‘BuLba’ Sosale into the Team Secret Dota 2 roster. BuLba will be fulfilling the offlane role left by Universe, and will join our current pre-existing roster of EternalEnvy, Puppey, Arteezy and pieliedie.”
This puts both teams in an interesting position as Valve’s Dota International Qualifiers are around the corner and having a new roster to get around might not yield well for either hopefuls. No team has won consecutive International in a row, with Natus Vincere perhaps being the closest in 2012 when they lost to Invictus Gaming. Evil Geniuses, 2015 Internationals winners, now face a rough road ahead.
Last Updated: June 10, 2016