Professional Dota 2 has been plagued with visa issues for some time now. It seems the ESL One Birmingham Major will be no different. ESL announced via their X account today that due to their inability to secure UK visas, 1win will not be able to attend the Major. OG will compete in their place as a the runners up in the WEU region.
Credit: ESL
WEU runners up replace EEU winners
Western EU has dominated other regions in recent years and now, there are 4 of the 12 teams will be from this region. Only Team Spirit will be representing eastern EU at the ESL One Birmingham Major.
But this seemingly isn’t for lack on trying on both orgs’ and ESL’s part. ESL extended the deadline for teams to obtain their visas (although it’s not clear how long it was extended by) and also offered the space to the next runner up from the EEU qualifiers, but they were also unable to attend.
OG themselves are no strangers to visa issues affecting their rosters. Captain at the time, Mikhail “Misha” Agatov was unable to play with OG during both the ESL Stockholm Major and ESL One Malaysia in 2022, which OG went on to win. But this time, there should be no such problem as OG already confirmed they will be able to attend in the UK.
OG still doesn’t have a fully confirmed roster but at this point, it’s very likely that Timado will once again step into position 1, as he has in recent tournaments.
All is not as it seems
Around an hour after ESL made the announcement on social media, 1Win’s coach Timur “Ahilles” Kulmuhambetov took to X himself. The short statement called ESL’s reasoning into question but the full story has not yet been announced.
Despite ESL’s statement confirming that the reason for the change was due to 1Win not being able to field a roster due to visa issues, it seems this may not be the case. According to their post, all players have both passports and visas. They claimed ESL simply took the slot away from them.
This article was originally published here
