At the end of five months of online game schedules and a best-of-five grand final, Romania snatched the title from Team Russia, despite starting with a one game disadvantage.
Started on September 21st 2015 with the intention of taking place over the course of two weeks, ProDota National Cup lasted for five months due to a massive amount of rescheduled matchups. Even so, the tournament continued its course with group stages to determine the main event seeds and on the 27th of November Team Romania played their first best-of three upper bracket series versus Finland.
Alongside Russia, the Finnish team was one of the strongest competitors on paper, having the former 4ASC/STARK e-Sports players to represent the country.
Unfortunately for Finland they met the five "not so well known on an international level" Romanian players in the first round of upper bracket and got knocked down to the loser bracket. In the loser bracket Finland had to play against Romania once more, this time in the 4th round and again they got defeated with a 0-2 score, which marked their elimination.
After sweeping through Finland and Sweden with clear victories, Team Romania faced Team Russia for the first time in the third round of the upper bracket where they got defeated by the CIS talents.
photo credits: Cristian "ppasarel" Banaseanu
In the loser bracket Romania eliminated Finland, the Yugoslavian and Turkish representatives and secured a rematch with Russia in the Bo5 grand finals.
The Russian team lead by Khaled "sQreen" El-Khabbash with Maxim "yoky-" Kim, Vladimir "yol" Basov and Maxim "TpoH" Vernikov playing for the ProDota National Cup title, had started the grand finals with a one game advantage coming from the winning side of the bracket.
But that didn’t stop Team Romania, who, despite not benefitting from any of the Romanian stars, managed to fight neck and neck with the Russians and pushed the series to a decisive game five which they won and claimed for themselves the ProDota National Cup title.
ProDota National Cup prize pool distribution:
1st: $7,000 Romania
2nd: $2,000 Russia
3rd: $1,000 Turkey
Team Romania roster:
Cosmin "Masakary" Nechifor - carry
Grigorie "KeyaNo" Andrei - mid
Razvan "Synergy" Strat - offlane
Razvan "iLLusionisT" Borceanu - support position 4
Razvan "Razvan" Chitanau - support position 5
Team Romania at IesF 2014 World Championship
All five Romanian players have been on and off playing for XPC Romania and three of them represented Romania along with Aliwi "w33" Omar at IesF 2014 World Championship where they finished on second place after losing the grand finals to Newbee’s roster at that time.
