Two weeks into the second season of Dota Pro Circuit regional leagues, Team Liquid are forced to make a temporary roster change, giving their offlane player Samuel "Boxi" Svahn time off to be with his family.
Team Liquid’s official announcement doesn’t disclose any details into Boxi’s and his family problems, but does encourage the fans to support him through what seems to be a very serious matter.
While Boxi is on leave for as long as he needs to, Team Liquid will continue their journey in Europe's upper division with Syed "SumaiL" Hassan. It is unclear if SumaiL will be assuming the offlane role or if Liquid will look into possible role swaps. So far, they played just two series in the six-week league and sit in the middle of the pack with one win and one loss. Their victory was registered just earlier this week when they took down 2-1 Team Nigma.
SumaiL’s arrival at Team Liquid comes after nearly a full year of a competitive break for him. Set to play alongside OG in 2020, SumaiL has actually got to compete with them at only a couple of online tournaments. Due to the impossibility of joining the team in Europe in pandemic times, and the high latency he had to overcome every match, SumaiL was replaced inside the OG line-up in July last year. Since then, he tried to make another return with the CIS super-star line-up put together by Alexey "Solo" Berezin and Roman "RAMZES666" Kushnarev ahead of the second season of EPIC League, but the same issues prevented the team to make a splash and the roster disbanded after getting eliminated from the aforementioned tourney.
With Liquid not making a strong appearance at the ONE Esports Singapore Major last month, the team is in dire need now of a good result in the second season to secure a ticket to the next Major. It remains to be seen for how long SumaiL will be standing in for Boxi and how the team will be impacted by this sudden change.
Team Liquid temporarily roster:
Micke “miCKe” Vu
Max “qojqva” Broecker
Syed Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan (stand-in)
Tommy “Taiga” Le
Aydin “iNsania” Sarkohi
