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Team Liquid announced the signing of Ludwig “zai” Wåhlberg, who joins the European Dota 2 roster as their sixth member. The news surfaced on Wednesday, November 3, marking Liquid’s first signing of the year.
Liquid Bolster Its Roster
Team Liquid bolstered its Dota 2 esports roster on Tuesday, with the addition of zai. The 24-year-old up-and-coming offlaner joins the North American esports organization from Team Secret.
The signing of zai comes amid the post-The International roster shuffle in Europe and sends out a strong message from one of the most storied organizations. Although adding zai is the only roster change Liquid has made so far this season, it shows the team’s commitment to compete for top spots in the 2022 season.
Zai joins a stacked roster of Michael “miCKe” Vu, Max “qojqva” Bröcker, Samuel “Boxi” Svahn, Tommy “Taiga” Le, and Aydin “iNSaNiA” Sarkohi. Liquid’s current core members joined the organization in October 2019 after its former roster left for Team Nigma.
Team Liquid will hope that the 24-year-old addition will help the team reach new heights in 2022, having failed to achieve much last term.
Liquid’ started the 2021 Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) season with a fourth-place finish at DreamLeague Season 14 DPC EU Upper Division and improved in the 15th season, placing second. However, despite their relative domestic success, Liquid haven’t achieved much on the international stage.
In April, Liquid attended ONE Esports Singapore Major 2021 but failed to show up. Even though Liquid made it out of the group stage, they slipped in the first round of the playoffs, losing to ViCi Gaming.
The team would qualify for WePlay AniMajor, but once again, Liquid failed to deliver as they finished in 13th place.
Things did not improve in the latter stages of the season, as Liquid managed only top-12 and top-10 place finishes at ESL One Summer 2021 and ESL One Fall 2021. However, the most painful performance came in July, when Liquid failed to qualify for The International 10.
Zai Could Be A Solution
Zai joins Team Liquid from their regional rivals, Team Secret, where he has spent 38 months. The 24-year-old started his Dota 2 esports career in 2013 with Stay Free and has since played for Super Strong Dinosaurs and S A D B O Y S before joining Evil Geniuses in February 2014.
During his stay with EG, zai placed fourth at The International 2014 but left the team to join Team Secret in January 2015. After that, however, he returned back to Evil Geniuses, where he has remained until August 2017.
Zai later represented OpTic Gaming for one year and returned to Team Secret in September 2018, where he has remained ever since.
Throughout his career, zai has won several Major tournaments and has three bronze medals from TI. He won his first two TI bronze medals with Evil Geniuses in 2014 and 2016 and one with Team Secret from 2021.
With the addition of zai, Team Liquid got their hands on one of the best European Dota 2 players, making it clear that the organization has high ambitions for the next season. However, Liquid have yet to announce whether there will be any departures from the team.
Regardless of who will leave the team to make room for zai, the addition of the Swedish Dota 2 pro effectively spells the end of Liquid’s current roster joint journey. The roster has been together since November 2017, when they joined Alliance, before signing for Liquid in 2019.
Unfortunately, changes had to be made as Liquid failed to achieve anything noteworthy with the ex-Alliance core. Their sole achievement came in November 2020, when Liquid won ESL One Germany 2020, but success has been hard to come by ever since.