Sébastien “Ceb” Debs, a two-time TI champion, has returned to competitive play and on his second attempt has qualified for the second division of the Western European Dota 2 Pro Circuit. Notorious for his earlier criticism of the North American Dota 2 scene, Ceb recently stated on Janne “Gorgc” Stefanovski’s stream that the second division in Western Europe was tougher than the first division in North America since there were more well-known players there.
Stating that he might be biased, Ceb claimed that WEU division two was arguably harder than NA division one.
“That’s how I feel, I’m sorry,” Ceb said. “But the mid laner of one of the qualified teams is a two-time TI winner, and the second one is a 12k MMR player.”
Highlighting that Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen and Artem “Lorenof” Melnick’s presence in WEU’s second division was enough to place the league above NA in terms of difficulty. Ceb then asked Gorgc whether he could name a core player from NA, and proceeded to tell him some of the names, asking if he knew them.
This isn’t Ceb’s first rodeo when it comes to trash-talking NA, however. Back in 2016, during a time when Ceb couldn’t be any further away from Dota 2 glory, the Frenchman called the NA qualifiers a “shitshow” compared to their EU equivalents.
Ceb’s 2016 tweet was enough to prompt a response from one of NA’s legendary captains Peter “PPD” Dager, who won The International 2015 with EG. The reigning TI champion at the time challenged Ceb to “put together one of your shit teams and come lose in the NA qualifier next year.”
After this back-and-forth between the two players, Ceb would go on to win two back-to-back TIs in 2018 and 2019.