PGL Wallachia Season 5: Liquid to play with stand-in again

PGL Wallachia Season 5 is just around the corner, and Team Liquid have already informed both PGL and their fans that Aydin “Insania” Sarkohi will be unavailable. The $1 million LAN competition is set to begin in just three days’ time, starting with the Swiss format group stage on June 21st.

The two-time TI winners did not disclose any details as to why Insania would be absent. Former Entity and PSG Quest offlaner Tobias “Tobi” Buchner will sub in for Insania for this one, and yes, that is indeed in the position 5 slot.

Back to tier 1 Dota

Tobi was the offlaner for Entity when they made it to The International back in 2022. Entity qualified for TI11 via the Western European regional qualifiers, beating out fan favorite squads like Team Secret and Nigma Galaxy to earn a spot at the grandest stage in Dota 2. Incidentally, Tobi and the rest of Entity sent Team Liquid to the lower bracket of that qualifier tournament in the upper bracket final. Prior to that, he enjoyed a top 6 finish at the PGL Arlington Major that same year.

After cutting his teeth at TI11, Tobi left Entity in June 2023 to take a short break from competitive play. He was then signed by PSG Quest in August that year, but was released just two and a half months later. This was in spite of the fact that PSG Quest placed 12th at DreamLeague Season 21 — a pretty decent result for such a new squad at the time.

DOTA 2 FANS, PSG IS BACK!

We are proud to announce our return to the #Dota2 scene through an exciting partnership with the Qatar based team @questesports_

Please give a warm welcome to PSG Quest 🔴🔵 pic.twitter.com/8BTfjP7E8t

— PSG Esports (@PSGeSports) October 10, 2023

Since then, Tobi has not been a permanent fixture on any tier 1 Dota team. He played for Tundra Esports at Elite League Season 1 and ESL One Birmingham in 2024. He proceeded to be a freelancer of sorts for a few different teams thereafter, most notably playing for MOUZ when the organization returned to the Dota 2 scene for the first time in seven years.

It’s nice to see Tobi playing at a tier 1 event again, even in such a limited capacity as this. And although I’m sure Liquid would love to have Insania for PGL Wallachia Season 5, sometimes you just have to roll with the punches and take whatever help you can get.

Another Substitute for Liquid

This marks the second consecutive premier tournament in the last three or so weeks that they’ve had to play with a substitute. They last did so with Alik “V-Tune” Vorobey replacing team captain Michael “miCKe” Vu at DreamLeague Season 26, which ended in an eighth place finish for the squad.

On paper, this result doesn’t look so bad, but if you ask me, they kind of just sleepwalked their way into the second group stage of the tournament. They squeaked past the cut off point of the first group stage because Shopify Rebellion couldn’t capitalize on Liquid’s milquetoast performance up to that point, and then they got dog-walked in the second group stage afterwards.

I guess it’s kind of what you can expect when your best player has to take a leave of absence. miCKe has consistently been the brightest spot for Team Liquid this season — the one constant in the midst of their rather inconsistent campaign this year.

For the group stage of PGL Wallachia Season 5, we will have Tobi standing in for @iNsan1a.

We're grateful to have him on board and looking forward to the games ahead 🙌

— Team Liquid Dota (@teamliquiddota) June 17, 2025

This time though, miCKe will be playing for them at PGL Wallachia, which is great news for both them and their fans. Insania is of course still a big part of their potential success at any given event, but it’s not a stretch to say that they’d probably prefer having miCKe around over him if they really had to choose.

Whether Tobi will prove to be a worthy replacement for the time being is still anyone’s guess. He hasn’t played at this level for more than a year now, and there’s only so much time for him to form chemistry with the rest of Liquid before the event starts on Saturday. Either way, the fact that they have to play with a stand-in yet again will present significant challenges for Liquid when they get to Bucharest, and I’m almost sure that the disappointment from the last time they had to do so still lingers in their minds.

But ah well, onward and upward, as they always say. There’s no time to think about what could happen if Insania were available; there’s only time to move forward and figure out how to best integrate Tobi for this tournament.