Kuku to stand in for Talon Esports in the upcoming qualifiers season

headline photo credits: Valve

Talon Esports are not spared from roster changes in the post TI 2024 shuffle.

For most of the Talon Esports players, The International 2024 (TI 2024) marked their debut at the pinnacle Dota 2 tournament. Unfortunately, their TI adventure was cut short by BetBoom Team, who eliminated them in the bottom four in the first lower bracket round,

Returned home with just a 13th-16th placement, Talon and their position 5 support player, Pang "ponyo" Sze Xuan have mutually agreed to part ways.

“Thank you for the dedication to the team, and for our journeys to Birmingham and Copenhagen. Good luck in your next step,” posted Talon on X.

However, with the new season starting less than two weeks after The International, the teams bound to start through qualifier rounds are forced to find quick solutions. For Talon that would mean to play the first set of qualifiers with a stand in and see how that would go.

Fortunately for them, the stand-in is SEA veteran Carlo "Kuku" Palad, who has played recently in the hard support role for TNC Predator. Although his comfort role is offlane, Kuku has switched between the two roles after he left T1 in 2022. Kuku spent the first part of 2023 playing offlane in the Filipino stack Team Darleng, but fell short in several qualifiers before moving to TNC.

He spent only two months at TNC, from May to the end of June and embraced the position 5 support there, trying to lead the team through the TI 2024 qualifier campaign. TNC placed third in the SEA battle for a ticket to Copenhagen, Denmark. Moving forward, Kuku will continue to play position 5 and will most likely take the captainship role at Talon as well.

Talon Esports roster

 Eljohn “Akashi” Andales
Rafli Fathur “Mikoto” Rahman
Chung “Ws`” Wei Shen
Tri “Jhocam” Kuncoro
Carlo “KuKu” Palad (stand-in)

Talon are expected to start the new season next week with the BetBoom Dacha Belgrade 2024 regional qualifiers, which will kick off on the 23rd of September, followed by DreamLeague Season 24 beginning on the 27th of the month.

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