Miposhka about reaching the playoffs of TI 2026: “I think we will still get together and unwind everyone”

Team Spirit's midlaner Denis 'Larl' Sigitov explained why he doesn't like to play public against his teammates, and coach Yaroslav 'Miposhka' Naydenov and offlaner Magomed 'Collapse' Khalilov discussed the group stage of The International 2026 and talked about preparations for the playoffs. The Dragons participants talked about all this in a new video blog from the tournament.

[How is your MMR in this tournament? Are you in the black now? ] In the middle. That is, neither minus nor plus. I consistently have my PTS, consistently top 1 in my head. Top 140... well, it hasn't been updated yet. [We have three numbers, right? ] Three numbers, but this new system has ruined everything. I was already on the win streak.

This is generally the most hellish thing that can happen. You play with KV's teammates, you play official games, you sit in the booth. If you're not sitting in the booth, you're sitting there, if you're not sitting there, you're sitting on the street. Or you eat with them. And you end up with them in matchmaking. And some of my teammates sometimes don’t try to win. If they don't try to win, I get upset about it. Because your enemies are always trying to win against you, and your teammates... well, they just came to call.

We finally made it to the playoffs. But it didn’t work out the previous year. This time I decided not to play, so it worked out. The last two days were difficult, but we managed to cope. I had to overcome it a little, I would say. The main thing is that we are in the playoffs. There will be time to chill out and collect my thoughts. Prepare again, recover and go into battle with new strength.

We went pretty well throughout the group: 3-0 score, playoffs just around the corner. We understood that PARIVISION is a strong team. Somehow we prepared for them. It so happened that we somehow underestimated our opponent... well, not that we underestimated, but simply that everyone tried to counter the same “Earth”, although they could have banned it. But that's not even the point. They just played better.

At that moment, they were simply better than us, and we just had to come to terms with the fact that we were not playing at their level yet, I would say so. We need a little more. A little more time will pass and we will play out, and we would be fine if we kept the pace. But it turned out that we seemed to be smeared.

We chatted after the game, discussed this and that. Already plus or minus the series with Nigma Galaxy, we had some doubts. [Miposhka: In yourself? ] In the game, I would say. [Miposhka: Well, they doubted themselves, yes]. Well, yes. We played a series with Nigma, but I would say it was not a game of Dota, but a complete facepalm.

[Miposhka: We just played non-teamwise, I would say]. It’s not that we weren’t a team, we just played like crap individually. Each of us was literally playing one of our... well, just really bad games.

Miposhka: There will be time to chill out a little and reboot. I think this is partly what influenced it. When the third day began, after the first two I already felt some kind of lethargy, lack of energy, vigor, and charge. Maybe they really put a lot of effort into the previous two days and didn’t have time to recover properly and didn’t get enough sleep. In this regard, this was the third day. The fourth one has already moved a little by inertia. The plans are now to reboot a little.

Collapse: I think you just need to quickly reboot, just relax. And in general, you just need, it seems to me, to set aside one day just to reboot, and then continue to play pubs and HF.

Miposhka: Perhaps we’ll go back a little to the base from which we came. Let's discuss this. That is, let’s remember why we played so well and try to get back to that. That's it. Thank you guys for watching and cheering. I think we will get together again and unwind everyone.

Earlier, Magomed 'Collapse' Khalilov talked about how Alexey 'not me' Kosmynin prepared for The International 2026, discussed the team's problems during the season, and also shared his opinion on the current meta.