Team Secret vs PSG.LGD Prediction: Battle of the Tournament Favorites

The International 2022 playoffs begin on Thursday, October 20, and will take place on the Singapore stage. Team Secret and PSG.LGD will face each other in the second match of the upper bracket.

The International 2022 is the year's main event in the cybersports discipline of Dota 2. This year's top 20 teams will battle it out in Singapore from October 15-30, 2022. The prize fund of the eleventh tournament in the tournament's history is more than 14 million dollars.

Puppey finished the group stage of The International 2022 in second place in Group B, only behind Tundra Esports. After the Last Chance Qualifier, these Europeans are hard to stop because if you look at Team Secret's results in Singapore (LCQ + TI11 group), the team has lost only once.

Puppey has no problems with the Chinese in Singapore, but PSG.LGD is different from all the Chinese teams that Team Secret has faced. It's essential for the Europeans that the xiao8 squad is not in the best condition right now, so Puppey has an excellent opportunity to send the main TI11 favorite straight to the bottom of the table.

The 2021/22 DPC cycle for Team Secret was highly problematic. Puppey finished outside the European majors in all three regional leagues and made it to Singapore only under regional qualification. They finished second after losing to Entity (0-3) in the final.

 For a long time, Clement tolerated his team's failures in the regional leagues, but still began to reshuffle the team in May. In May, Team Secret said goodbye to its curry SumaiL, signing Crystallis from Entity to replace him. One lineup reshuffle didn't help success in the summer regional league round, so Puppey made another reshuffle before the regional classifications at TI11. Since the Riyadh Masters 2022 tournament, the team has been playing with Zayac, who came in fourth instead of YapzOr, and with the Resolut1on triple instead of iceiceice. The transfer of the latter greatly enhanced the team's game, although Resol has not played anywhere for a long time, and in Team Secret he plays not in the usual position of the carry, but the third one.

PSG.LGD team doesn't look like themselves. On the first matchday of the group stage of The International 2022, the xiao8 squad antisurprised everyone, playing three BO2 matches and not winning any of them, while their opponents were such teams as Hokori and Soniqs.

After the initial failure, xiao8 worked with his wards, and on the next game day, the public saw an utterly different PSG.LGD has already calmly overcome the resistance of two European giants, OG and Team Liquid. After two more victories over Royal Never Give Up and BOOM Esports, the Chinese relaxed, playing a draw with Gaimin Gladiators and BetBoom Team. The PSG.LGD players are not trying to tear everyone and everything apart as they did a year ago on the group stage. The Chinese seem to be sitting in an ambush and will jump out of it just in the playoffs. 

PSG.LGD is approaching the next The International again as a favorite but no longer a unanimous choice. The reason for that is the defeat of the Chinese in the final of the American major. The xiao8 squad once again showed that they were ready to smash everyone on their way to the finals, but their great game disappeared somewhere in the decisive match.

After the summer majors, PSG.LGD teams did not play anywhere and systematically prepared for this start. Many say that the Chinese played poorly at the test games in Singapore, but we have to understand that the guys didn't fall through the cracks, and xiao8 came to TI11 with a series of blanks that will be shown already in the group stage. We are not sure that the match with Hokori will deliver anything because the opponent is five goals lower regarding the performers' skill.

In my opinion, PSG.LGD is now the most stable team in the world if it is motivated and not playing in the finals of international events. It is worth realizing that the team xiao8 won the first and second DPC league in China, and both regional finals Valve organized for the Chinese region instead of the majors. In the summer tour, the team relaxed because the main task was completed ahead of schedule.

For this match, we offer the following options: TO (110.5), H2 (-6.5), and the maps TO (2.5).