Team SMG Qualifies For The International 2023

The bloodbath of the qualifiers has reached its climax in the SEA region, and Team SMG has come out victorious. Since its founding, the team failed to qualify for The International despite featuring some star players. In The International 2022, it even slipped their mind to participate in the regional qualifiers because of a human error. Nevertheless, what matters now is the team finally makes it to TI.

The Journey

Since its founding, Team SMG has consisted of various star players from the SEA region. However, despite their players, the team always struggled to perform during the official DPC season. Because of their performance, they always had to take the hard way to The Internationals. The team also had a tarnished reputation due to the fallout with one of their players.

The team revamped their roster going into the 2022-2023 DPC Season, but their miseries followed. However, with the team’s efforts, their results started to improve. The team even qualified for The Berlin Major. Unfortunately, the team got eliminated after the end of the group stages. After placing a fifth-place finish in the Spring Tour, the team had to go through the cutthroat qualifiers to secure a TI seat.

The Qualifiers

Going into the qualifiers, Team SMG made a roster shuffle. They brought a veteran player, Volodymyr "No[o]ne-" Minenko, from Western Europe as the team’s new safelaner. At Team SMG, No[o]ne- got paired with another veteran player, Yeik "MidOne" Nai Zheng. Together, the duo yielded great results, as the team tore down everyone at the qualifiers without any effort.

Moreover, Team SMG triumphed over their regional nemesis, Blacklist Rivalry. They knocked Blacklist down to the lower bracket finals with a clean sweep. However, Blacklist eliminated Geek Fam at the lower bracket finals to advance to the grand finals. At the grand finals, SMG took another clean series against their rivals, securing their ticket to Seattle for October.

Featured Image Source:  Twitter/@TeamSMGofficial