When two-time The International (TI) champion Sébastien “Ceb” Debs left his role as coach to rejoin OG’s active roster for the second time, questions surrounding the motivation behind his return started flying.
In an interview released by OG, Ceb made the reason for his return clear; he doesn’t like seeing his team, the only one in the history of the game to ever raise the Aegis of Champions in two-straight years, lose.
“There’s always something that I look at and I’m like, “this is it.” It was winning TI once, then it was that no one has ever won it back-to-back. But now, what actually drives me the most is that I take offense from teams thinking they can win against us,” Ceb said.
“I take offense because I’d like to think that after what we have done, they should realize that beating us isn’t realistic. Maybe you can, but there is no way that you believe that you can. That’s nonsense, you should believe that you can’t.”
Unfortunately for OG’s twice-coach-turned-player, his team has been losing more than they would want and have not yet won a single tournament since they returned to play this season.
OG placed 5th-8th at the WeSave! Charity Play showmatch, failed to even make the playoffs at the WePlay! Pushka League Season 1, finished second behind Virtus.pro at ESL One Los Angeles 2020 Online, third at the Gamers Without Borders 2020 charity Dota 2 tournament and at OGA Dota PIT 2020 Online Season 1, bottomed out at ESL One Birmingham 2020 Online, finished third again at BLAST Bounty Hunt, then most recently placed 7th-8th at Beyond EPIC.
Ceb even played with OG as a stand-in in the first five of those tournaments when Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen and Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng were still unable to join the team due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But now that Ceb, along with his unwavering confidence, is back in the lineup, OG are looking to return to their winning ways. But before they can raise another championship, the team still has a lot of issues to work out.
With Ceb back as the offlaner, MidOne has shifted to another role for the second time this season, this time taking up the carry role vacated by Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan. And while SumaiL’s departure leaves OG with less star power than they did before, the team now has three of its two-time TI championship-winning core back together.
Another chance to play with Topson and longtime teammate and friend, Johan “N0tail” Sundstein, gave Ceb another reason to start playing again.
“Every second that [Topson and N0tail] play and I’m not in the game, then I feel like I just wasted that second and it’s not coming back. I wanna play these games with them and to have what we had going, our friendship and our trust, I want to experience all that again,” said Ceb.
“It’s a blessing to be able to experience that and I just want other teams to cope with the consequence of that. I want to go through it again and remind them what their place is.”
Ceb and OG will be looking to remind everyone else that they are still the only team to have won TI two years in a row as they are currently playing at OGA Dota PIT Online Season 2.
But whether or not all the other teams should give up all hope of winning against OG, as Ceb would like them to do, remains to be seen.
“I feel challenged, I feel like it’s a duel. Yeah, I believe that we will win. So, prove us wrong,” said Ceb.
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