Team Secret signs up for TI2025 open qualifiers

It wouldn’t be The International without Clement "Puppey" Ivanov at least attempting to qualify for the pinnacle event of the year.

Puppey and his Team Secret had an awful year so far. Although this is not the first year Puppey struggled to put together a strong roster, the 2024-2025 competitive season might actually be the worst in Secret’s history. There were no Tier 1 tournaments with Team Secret competing, and roster changes kept happening with almost every qualifier round.

In fact, ahead of the first round of Western European open qualifiers for The International 2025, Puppey was not ready with a full line-up. Everything fell into place just in time for the second wave of open brackets, where Team Secret will be competing with former Virtus.pro and 1win players.

Puppey will be sharing the lane with Ilya "Kiritych" Ulyanov, who is still on the Virtus.pro roster, but was moved to an inactive status in March this year. Secret’s mid lane features Maxim "reibl" Afanasyev, who comes from Yellow Submarine, while the offlane has a Brazilian-Russian combo with Aleksandr "Cloud" Zakharov from 1win and Thiago "Thiolicor" de Oliveira Cordeiro, who last played for Shopify Rebellion.

Team Secret roster for TI14 qualifiers

• Ilya "Kiritych" Ulyanov
• Maxim "reibl" Afanasyev
• Aleksandr "Cloud" Zakharov
• Thiago "Thiolicor" de Oliveira
• Clement "Puppey" Ivanov

This marks the second time in Puppey’s career when he will have to go through open qualifier rounds for The International. The first time he had to do that was in 2016, at TI6, when Team Secret featured the likes of Artour "Arteezy" Babaev and Jacky "EternaLEnVy" Mao.

Team Secret’s last appearance on the TI stage was in 2022 when Puppey fell short of a second Aegis of Champions at the hands of Tundra Esports. A year before that, Puppey was already the ONLY player to have had the honour to compete at every edition of The International.

This unmatchable streak was stopped in 2023, the first year when Team Secret was defeated in the closed regional qualifier battle. The legendary Dota 2 captain missed the train to last year’s TI as well, but hopefully his fans get to see him on the biggest Dota 2 stage once again this year, in Hamburg, Germany.

TI2025 second round of open qualifiers begins today, June 2nd, at 16:00 CET with a best-of-one brawl up until the round of 16. Round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals, final, and the 3rd place decider will be played in a best-of-three series format.

Six hours before the open qualifiers start time, 59 teams registered. The top three teams will advance to the closed qualifiers, which are scheduled to unfold next week from June 13th to 17th.