The soap opera that is Fnatic CSGO continued, with two more roster updates that suggest a slight lack of joined up thinking somewhere in the company’s structure. Leaving the team after a brief but high-profile run will be William "draken" Sundin, with his replacement set to be Simon “twist” Eliasson, one of the most-discussed players never to make a real run at the top tier of CSGO.
While twist is known as one of the more talented players to come out of Sweden in recent years, there have always been doubts about his mentality and ability to play at the top level, fuelled in no small part by the player rejecting moves to big teams and at one point choosing to leave Fnatic to go back to Godsent. It may be that he has overcome those issues, or maybe the more cynical "he knows he’ll never play on the big stage in this team" crowd are right but, as a pickup, it’s certainly one that will inspire more questions than confidence.
Alongside this move, it was announced on Twitter by the player himself that Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom would continue to stand in for the team, but has not been added as a permanent member and did not know of any plans to do so. This all follows the shock departure of Robin “flusha” Rönnquist to Cloud 9 recently, which marked the end of arguably the greatest core in CSGO history, and certainly his bromance with Jesper “JW” Wecksell.
This is the latest in a string of moves the organisation have made in an attempt to regain their level and, so far, none of them have worked. As mentioned, a look at the moves the team has made recently also suggests there is no real joined up thinking above, and that they may already have discarded players with the ability to improve their lot based on small annoyances or personal preference.
How did we get here?
It seems crazy to think this is where the team has arrived, after all they have been through, but the path to this point is even more pointlessly painful than it needed to be. Anyone who watched CSGO knows they are not at the point they were when they won tournament after tournament, dethroning Ninjas in Pyjamas along the way but, even 12 months ago, they were way better than they are today and yet they’ve continued to regress.
Flash back a few brief months and the team was winning the richest event in CSGO, the WESG tournament in China, with Malik “Golden” Selim leading the team. Things looked good in isolation, but even that win was tainted with the fact the team had tried to remove him prior to it and, despite taking home the $850k first place prize from China, Golden was stabbed in the back and sacked a few weeks later.
Since then, they’ve brought in former NiP man Richard "Xizt" Landström despite all the signs being that he is well past being able to hang at the top level, and spent a couple of months playing with Jonas “Lekr0” Olofsson, before kicking the latter. Lekr0 immediately went on to NiP, where he has proven not only his ability to frag, but also lead a team, while the Fnatic he left behind continued to flounder like a latter-day president trying to get out of a swimming pool at one of his many hotels.
Title Image: Fnatic
