Unlike football, CS:GO doesn’t have a transfer window. But most transfers happen during breaks between tournaments: in the middle of winter and summer. The CS.MONEY Blog compiled five of this winter’s hottest reshuffles.
Flamie joining 1WIN: a step backward or a chance to reboot his career?
Egor “flamie” Vasilyev stopped playing for NAVI last April. After that, he represented the club’s youth team at two academy tournaments. Egor didn’t exactly shine at the time, failing to stand out his among young, less experienced teammates.
On January 10, 2022, the announcement came that flamie was moving to 1WIN, a Russian club playing in medium events. Last year, it attended just one RMR tournament out of three — and finished 12th–14th.
Then again, the team has a talented player in Denis “deko” Zhukov on board. He’s a 20-year-old AWPer and, with a rating of 1.17, the team’s best player. Dmitriy “sh1ro” Sokolov noted Denis’s potential and expressed his belief that the 1WIN member will enter the top-20 in the HLTV rankings by the end of 2022.
It’s certainly not a hopeless roster that Flamie joined: 1WIN may indeed have something up their sleeve. However, the lineup is unlikely to lay any significant claim to serious achievements. Egor himself is well aware of his new team’s caliber:
“The plan is to get into the top 20-30, to begin with, because the team has now made replacements and dropped out of the top-30. We need to get into the top 30 and start inching toward bigger things.”
In addition, Flamie said the team should occupy a slot in the top 10 rankings by the end of the year, but that’s a very optimistic prediction. After all, 1WIN isn’t even in the top five of CIS-based clubs right now.
In any event, it’s a chance for Egor to prove himself again — and then to either achieve some results with 1WIN or move to a stronger team.
Fallen gathered his old friends. Average age of the squad is 28.1
Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo spent all of 2021 with Liquid. He doubled as captain and AWPer, but the team scarcely made any accomplishments. His biggest achievement was first place at cs_summit 8, North America’s RMR tournament.
At the end of the year, the news popped up that Liquid was intending to make reshuffles: the rlineup played its last tournaments already well-aware of it. The roster’s memrbers to leave included Fallen. The Brazilian decided to leave the team out of his own volition in order to play along with his compatriots again. He invited to his lineup two friends with whom he won two Majors: Fernando “fer” Alvarenga and Lincoln “fnx” Lau. Joining Gabriel will also be Ricardo “boltz” Prass, another former teammate. The fifth player is Vinicius “VINI” Figueiredo, who left Furia.
Of course, Fallen is absolutely certain that LastDance — that’s what he called his lineup — will succeed. The club is currently in search of an organization.
“I turned down some top offers to be here. I left Liquid myself and decided to come here.
I had my doubts about this decision, but a week later, I realized I wasn’t wrong. I’m sure that if something doesn’t work out in a match, we’ll just talk and fix it by the next encounter.”
Self-confidence and a belief in your teammates are definitely laudable. The newly-found team’s positive outlook notwithstanding, the feeling that LastDance won’t succeed at all is there.
First of all, the average age of the squad is 28.1. The history of CS has, as of yet, never seen such old teams hit their big time. Second, we’ve already witnessed something similar to LastDance’s situation a few years ago. Then, after the reshuffles in SK/MIBR (when tarik and stewie2k were joining the roster), the team returned to the lineup that had won Majors, with felps as the fifth instead of fnx. That roster didn’t win any big event.
LastDance is a squad where Fallen gathered his old friends. He won Majors with some of them — and that’s probably why he expects his roster to have a chance to be among the world’s best teams. Let’s see how it really works out.
New Liquid lineup: Nitr0, shox & oSee
With the new Fallen team covered, let’s now discuss the old one! Liquid has made some drastic changes, with only Keith “NAF” Markovic and Jonathan Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski left from the old line-up.
Richard “shox” Papillon is one of the three Liquid rookies. Over his career, the Frenchman has won everything there is to win, including a Major. Still, his last year with Vitality can hardly be called a success. The team had only one victory, and shox himself finished the season with a negative rating — for the first time ever.
But perhaps the transition will prove good for Riсhard and he’ll be able to find a boost for his play in this new environment. Moreover, since it’s not every day that you get to sign such experienced players, it’s a great deal for Liquid as well.
While Joshua “oSee” Ohm is currently Liquid’s least famous player, he could, in theory, become the team’s main trump card. After all, Joshua is an AWPer, and he’s therefore supposed to lead the game. Besides, he’s been good on previous teams. True, oSee has mostly played in North American tournaments, where the CS:GO scene has suffered a decay over recent years. Regardless, getting noticed means that the region simply can’t offer any better candidates right now.
Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella is probably Liquid’s biggest transfer. Nick was the club’s captain for five years, from 2015 to 2020. And Liquid was having a hard time with exactly that role.
Nitr0 returned not only to Liquid, but also to CS:GO in general. For the last year and a half, he’s played in Valorant. However, Canella admitted that it’s Valve’s shooter that’s always been his favorite:
“I don’t know if you remember, but when I left Liquid, I was still interested in playing CS. Valorant was never my first choice, it was still Valve’s shooter. I really enjoy the game to this day.”
In the days when Nitr0 captained Liquid, the squad achieved impressive results:victories in major tournaments and first place in the HLTV ranking. Liquid was the team that put up a fight against Astralis in their best form.
Granted, Liquid definitely took a risk by swapping as many as three players. But maybe that’s just what it takes: new players, new ideas, and an old captain.
Ropz joining FaZe: he’ll play with Karrigan again
Robin “ropz” Kool has represented Mouz for four and a half years: he arrived there as a young FPL player, and now he’s leaving the roster as one of the world’s best riflers. Over his time with Mouz, Robin has won several trophies and consistently popped up in the HLTV top, but the lineup never quite managed to establish itself in the pool of elite teams. Therefore, Ropz decided on a transition.
Kool’s new club is FaZe Clan. At the moment, it’s certainly the best international team on the pro scene. The Estonian’s transfer seems like a win-win situation: Olofmeister, who hasn’t exactly shown amazing play recently, is gone, and taking his place will be a top-notch shooter who’ll help both himself and the club to conquer new heights.
On paper, the new FaZe lineup looks really powerful. It seems, however, that this statement has been applicable to almost every FaZe lineup after reshuffles.
There are presently higher expectations from FaZe than before. After all, the maganement’s inviting Ropz to the club shows the former must have very ambitious goals for the squad. The Estonian is lucky to have Finn “karrigan” Andersen as his captain. The two have played a year in Mouz and already know each other well.
Ropz definitely came to FaZe to grab some trophies. Rumor has it, he even agreed to a pay cut.
M0nesy in G2: biggest transfer in CS:GO over the recent years
Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov’s move to G2 is definitely the main CS:GO event of the winter. And undoubtedly the main transfer of the last few years. Rumor has it, the 16-year-old Russian was paid a whopping $600,000. Ilya has already met with new teammates — and is ready to conquer the tier-1 scene.
Before G2, M0nesy played in NAVI Junior. Ilya got there at the age of 14 and over the two years he spent in the squad, he always stood out among his teammates. The great thing about Ilya: just like s1mple, he is an all-rounder boasting an equally brilliant command of the AWP on the one hand and the AK-47 or M4 on the other.
Still, in G2, Osipov is naturally assuming the role of the first AWPer. Prior to that, it was François “AMANEK” Delaunay who was responsible for the team’s AWP game. And while he was not bad at times, the lineup looks much stronger by an order of magnitude with M0nesy.
The M0nesy transfer is a most interesting precedent. It’s the first time a CIS-based player joins a top club at such an early age — and for such a huge sum.
Most likely, it’s not the only replacement in G2. There’s no official confirmation yet, but according to insiders, the team’s going to change its IGL. Replacing Nemanja “nexa” Isakovi will be Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen, who’s played for OG for the last two years.
The new G2 lineup looks pretty promising, albeit the replacement of the captain seems a bit weird. In any event, M0nesy will definitely add firepower to the gang. Perhaps he’ll spend some time getting used to the new level of the game, but as time passes, he should learn the ropes just fine.
This winter witnessed a lot of exciting transitions, and some of them haven’t even happened yet. In this post, we only focused on the most interesting ones.
