Photo Courtesy of Epicenter
Team Spirit have moved to bring in veteran CIS mid laner Sergey 'G' Bragin to replace Igor 'iLTW' Filatov, after the latter left the squad earlier in the month.
The CIS stack have moved fast to replace Igor 'iLTW' Filatov, bringing in the former Virtus Pro and Vega Squadron mid laner who had only joined Gambit Esports at the start of February however after a string of disappointing results since then, Sergey 'G' Bragin stepped down from the squad to join up with Team Spirit.
This move reunites four of the five members of the 2015 Virtus Pro roster that took 5-6th place at TI5, with Ilya ‘Illidan’ Pivcaev, Alexander ‘DKphobos’ Kucheria and Artsiom ‘FNG’ Barshak all already playing for Team Spirit.
Due to the new roster lock rules brought in at the same time as the Dota Pro Circuit, the new line-up will have to battle it out in the open qualifiers for TI8 as teams that change their roster after the February 5th deadline are not eligible for an invite to the regional qualifiers. This would be a similar situation to the TI6 debacle where Evil Geniuses and Team Secret were forced to play from open qualifiers for changing rosters after the lock, despite the former being the reigning TI champions.
The new Team Spirit Roster as a whole consists of:
Ilya 'Illidan' Pivcaev
Sergey 'G' Bragin
Alexander 'DKphobos' Kucheria
Malthe 'Biver' Winther
Artsiom 'FNG' Barshak
The new squad is currently playing in the Epicenter XL CIS closed qualifiers that end on March 1st, where they will be looking to secure their place in the Moscow based Major in April, however, DKphobos is recovering from illness so Rodion ‘MYSmoon’ Fomkin is standing in on the offlane.
