Yesterday I was having a good day, farming reddit karma, watching ESPN and after a good day of CSGO I go to sleep. Everything was fine: New update in a few weeks, teams are stable, it looks like some organizations are growing in interest to sponsoring a CSGO team.
Then today happened. AND EVERYTHING EXPLODED.
It all started Virtus.pro, a team which hasn't really had a great CS team since 2007, releasing their extremely competitive CSGO team. The apparent reason was the fact that it looked like they had a new team all lined up and VP was not part of it. Not really big news, eastern European teams change lineups a lot and teams decided to stop sponsoring games all time. Not a big deal right?
But then I checked my facebook and saw that Poland's golden five - a team which won 2 ESWC, 2 IEM and 2 WCG championships - was disbanding. Given their lackluster results recently you could probably think, rightfully, that they were just retiring. However it appears that only Loord whose skills have been declining steadily for at least 3 years, was retiring. This means that NEO, the second best player of all time, Taz, one of the greatest tacticians in CS history, kuben, a steady rifle who is a super star in his own right, and pasza, one of the up and coming talents out of Poland, are all on the market now.
That should be enough for one day? Wrong. HLTV.org then reported that Markeloff, the superstar awp of Ukrainian Na'Vi, was leaving the team with one waiting for him to join. The team that swept 2010 and won back2back IEM championships are now left with 4 players after switching to CSGO and having mediocre results.
"What team is waiting for Markeloff to join" you ask. The former VP lineup. The only players not represented in this new team are Kucher, who has been the best Ukrainian not on Na'vi, and Guardian, the Slovenian player who was recruited to add an awp to the lineup.
However that roster move isn't quite done yet as Virtus.Pro states that they still have the team they just released under contract and the reason for the team's shutdown was due to the players not fulfilling contractual obligations. That means that 6 of the best players in CSGO can't even play until at least the end of the year, unless they come to an agreement with VP on what to do. Furthermore Fox have denied all the claims made against him and his team by the VP organization and retorted that VP did not do all of the things that they promised as well.
Here are the tentative rosters:
Golden five:
Kuben
Neo
pasza
taz
Ex-Virtus.Pro:
Markeloff
Ange1
Dosia
Fox
Adren
Na'Vi:
Ceh9
Zeus
Starix
Edward
FA:
Kucher
Guardian
Fantasy land/might happen rosters:
Na'VI:
Cheh9
Zeus
Starix
Edward
Guardian
ESC/Whatever their sponsor is:
Kuben
Neo
Pasza
taz
Kucher
The Na'vi Lineup seems more reasonable - replacing one elite level awper with another. Won't be the same though, but it makes sense and addresses their need. Plus they must share the language since Na'Vi speaks Russian as well as ukrainian and Guardian just played for a Russian team.
The ESC/Whatever lineup is to nice and tidy. I think they'll probably disband permanently. I think taz, pasza and neo will probably continue playing and Kuben will retire leaving Kucher still on the market. So that "golden trio" will make an international team as they just had great success with on recently and still have the talent to play at the top level of CS.
