For any professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive organization, the goal always remains the same: perform well on the competitive major scene and win their respective major tournaments. As a result, these teams make major changes in the offseason to increase their chances of success for the next year.
In preparation for the 2023 year, several teams have made some updates to their roster modifications. If you are interested to know what organizations we are talking about, follow along with this article.
Ninjas in Pyjamas
As of NiP, the team hasn’t done anything noteworthy for the 2022 season. The only successes have been two victories in the Global Esports Tour Dubai 2022 (A-Tier) and the Svenska Cupen 2022 (B-Tier).
Despite not achieving great results in most S-Tier tournaments, the team qualified for the IEM Katowice 2023, which begins on Jan. 31. With it being a bit more than a month away from the first major event of the year, NiP has announced several roster changes as follows below.
The Team Sends es3tag to the Bench
The Swedish organization has made an official tweet that it has moved Patrick “es3tag” Hansen to the bench and is allowing him to explore new offers for the 2023 season.
The Danish rifler arrived at NiP at the end of 2021 after a brief stand-in stint at Complexity where he could not improve the results of the American club. Throughout 2022, Patrick has had to adapt to the different needs of NiP, becoming the AWPer of the team with Love “phzy” Smidebrant before Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz’s decision to step down from the starting roster in late 2021.
However, the big changes within the Swedish team came with the signings of both Aleksi “aleksib” Virolainen and Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin. And now, they are considering a NaVi’s academy player among other contenders to fill the vacant spot on their roster.
NaVi’s Academy Player is up For Transfer
NiP has already reportedly found a replacement for es3tag. The Swedish organization is interested in signing Natus Vincere’s academy player Daniil “headtr1ck” Valitov.
The latter is one of the primary junior players as both a rifler and AWPer. He has already had stand-in stints with the main squad at EPL Season 15 and BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2022. During both these events, Daniil scored a 0.97 rating in six maps on average and a 1.12 rating in four maps, respectively.
On top of that, the 18-year-old Ukrainian has shown some solid numbers in 2022 to back himself up. He boasted a 1.28 rating 2.0, 86.2 average damage, 1.24 impact, and only 0.63 deaths per round, according to https://cover.gg/players. With such statistics, there is no surprise that top organizations are considering him as a potential new signing.
Astralis
Another team that has moved the chip, mostly because of necessity, is Astralis. The team has recorded its poor performance during 2022, being left out of major CS:GO tournaments and missing out on some important qualifiers. After not getting a place in IEM Katowice 2022, the Danish organization wants to expect different results from the next season and is already working on its roster. More changes or a star signing are expected, but we will have to wait for it.
MistR Returns to the Academy
The Danish team’s list excludes Mikkel “MistR” Thomsen, an academy player who was helping the organization until it found the new and last piece. As the 18-year-old player has failed to impress with his form over the past few months, the organization will have to rebuild the training process around roster cohesion.
The club has already reportedly burned through attempts to sign Victor “Staehr” Staehr and Rasmus “sjuush” Beck, thus settling on the young Dane from Christian Møss “Buzz” Andersen. If the potential transfer goes through, Astralis will return Mikkel “MistR” Thomsen to the academy and continue as a substitute for the main team.
Buzz is the Last Piece of the Team
At the time of writing this article, the Danish team has officially confirmed the signing of Christian Møss “Buzz” Andersen, a young promising player from MASONIC. The player himself assured that he is very happy to sign for such an important team as Astralis and emphasized that he plays in the role that he feels most comfortable.
With this new signing, the young MASONIC’s star rejuvenates the squad by including a new gear with very experienced players. As a result, gla1ve, blameF, dev1ce, Xyp9x, and Buzz will be standing for Astralis in the next season.
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