Major Roster Moves in Professional Counter-Strike
After the conclusion of IEM Sydney 2023, there have been many roster changes and moves in wake of the swap over to Counter-Strike 2 for competitive play.
The biggest story was Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev considered by many as the greatest professional Counter-Strike player of all time would be stepping away from competing for the time being. Many major pros have voiced their disdain with the new game as it is incomplete and still has many bugs and problems that need fixed before being configured for professional play.
Cloud9 announced on the same day that Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov would be moved to the bench and that they would be adding Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov to the active roster in his place.
These moves showed the shift in how teams are viewing the “AWP” or sniper player role of the team as the AWP (the sniper rifle in Counter-Strike) is not as formidable as in the previous iteration and gets a lot less value in Counter-Strike 2.
This roster change season has brought out many unexpected storylines that could completely shift teams entire roster around and take teams that were atop of the food chain to become middle of the road to low tier teams in just a few moves.
Falcons, a Saudi Arabian backed team has been making some of the biggest moves to build a mega roster to make a bid at the top spot in the world. Before IEM Syndey, they signed Vitality’s coach Danny “zonic” Sørensen. It has also been reported that another member of the Vitality team Emil “Magsik” Reif has a deal basically done with Falcons and that he would be joining their starting roster.
Those two weren’t even the biggest names to be joining Falcons during this roster shuffle. Nikola “NiKo” Kovač is rumored to be also moving to the team in an absolutely shocking move in the scene. NiKo has been apart of G2 Esports for three years at this point and did not show any signs of leaving the team anytime soon. G2 seem to have hit a crossroad where they are now unable to pay their star players the salary they are currently getting meaning another young superstar in Ilya “m0nesy” Osipov could potentially be on the move as well.
To stay up to date on all the roster moves and news coming out of the Counter-Strike scene go to HLTV for the most up to date news.
