Team Empire has announced that their squad will not attend the upcoming DreamLeague phase 2 which will be played out on LAN. Internal issues seem to prevent the organization from sending a full roster to Stockholm which is why they pulled out. An official replacement has yet to be announced.
Today, Team Empire has announced that their Dota 2 squad will pull out of the ongoing DreamLeague season 2. The squad was designated to travel to Stockholm for the 2nd phase of the tournament that would span over 10 days at the MonserEnergy Studios. According to Team Empire's CEO Alexander 'StrangeR' Solomonov, the team is suffering from internal issues and would thus be unable to attend the event with a full official roster.
"Unfortunately, there were contradictions in the team, which is very difficult to to solve in one day, and most likely there will be replacements in the squad. At the moment we have no confidence in a positive result at DreamLeague and no stable lineup we could send to Sweden. Take foreign standins and just play the tournament with random results - that's not what we wanted to do, especially given the fact that the tournament will last from 7 to 14 days.
We immediately had notified the tournament administration, so they still had a chance to find a replacement. Now our main objective is to resolve the problems in the Dota 2 squad and prepare the team for the upcoming tournaments. Detailed information and the decision from our management will be announced in the coming days."
While nothing has been made official yet, it seems as if captain Roman 'Resolut1on' Fominok has departed from the team. Whether it was on his own accord or whether the team didn't want to play with him is uncertain, but former Virtus.pro Polar player Roman 'Scandal' Sadotenkov has been standing in for the team lately.
DreamLeague has yet to make an official statement regarding a possible replacement. It seems likely that Virtus.pro would step in as the team has placed third in the Eastern European division of the league's groupstage.
Team Empire's current official roster:
Roman 'Resolut1on' Fominok
Maxim 'yoky-' Kim
Ayrat 'Silent' Gaziev
Andrey 'ALWAYSWANNAFLY' Bondarenko
Aleksei 'Solo' Berezin
Source: Team-Empire.org