This morning, leaked text messages on Weibo between Ren “eLeVeN” Yangwei and the owner of Team Aster confirmed that Team Elephant are disbanding. This was further confirmed by Dong “Hide” Hang, the team’s manager during the previous season. The translation was provided by Leon Arthur on Twitter.
Seems like Elephant is disbanding,
Image 1 : Translation of a leaked conversation between Old 11 & Aster's Owner on taking over Elephant's squad.
Image 2 : Elephant's Manager, Hide, confirming the disbandment.#CNShuffle pic.twitter.com/5y8b2mY074
— Arthur (@LeonArthurDota) November 10, 2021
Team Elephant Disband: The superteam doesn’t work
Team Elephant were touted as a superteam when they first formed off of the remnants of the 2020 PSG.LGD team that ended top three in The International 8 and 9. The team was led by Xu “fy” Linsen, one of the greatest Chinese captains in DOTA history. Along with him was Lu “Somnus丶M” Yao, the superstar mid laner who was also a part of the same PSG.LGD squad. They were surrounded by veterans in every other position with Xie “Super” Junhao, Zhou “Yang” Haiyang and Zhang “Eurus” Chengjun. When the roster first debuted, they were predicted to do extremely well in the Chinese DOTA Pro Circuit (DPC). However, they came fifth in both seasons of the DPC last year.
Even though Team Elephant made it into The International 10, their performance was lackluster. They ended 13-16th, losing to Evil Geniuses in the first round of the lower bracket, and were out of The International 10 as fast as they got in. The team disbanding does not come as a surprise to any fan, as none of the high expectations for the team were met.
The translated text message in eLeVeN’s fan group chat confirmed that eLeVeN, Somnus丶M, Fy and Yap “xNova” Jian Wei would be playing together in 2022, even if there isn’t an organization to sponsor them throughout the season. They are still looking for a final player to complete the roster ahead of the oncoming 2022 DPC season.
