Fnatic brings in three new players

Fnatic has decided to change its CS2 roster again. The team has been struggling to find good results in the past 12 months, so it was time to try something radically different.

The players who left are mezii, roeJ, and dexter. Arguably, mezii should not have been released because he was more than decent. His recent title victory with Team Vitality at BLAST Premier: Fall Final clearly proves this. But for some reason, Fnatic wanted to make a drastic roster change.

The results that led to this decision

Fnatic won their last important trophy in November 2022. It happened at Elisa Masters Espoo, which was an A-tier CS:GO tournament. Prior to that, they finished 5^th – 8^th at IEM Rio Major. This was a great result, despite the early loss in the playoffs. An earlier decent result came at ESL Pro League S16. Fnatic finished that event 9^th – 12^th.

But after the 2022 season ended, something went wrong. Or perhaps, something went right for a lot of other CS teams. One thing is certain: in 2023, Fnatic went from decent to awful in a matter of months, and then never recovered. The last notable performance came for them at BLAST.tv Paris Major, where they finished 9^th – 11^th.

At IEM Dallas they finished 13^th – 16^th. At IEM Cologne, they were 9^th – 12^th. They took part in more than half a dozen tournaments after the Major and not once did they finish in the top six or at least top eight. How this happened, we’ll never know.

The biggest problem was that Fnatic didn’t get sent home just by world-class opponents. They were also humiliated by relatively insignificant teams they should have defeated.

This is FNATIC Counter-Strike. pic.twitter.com/jTt0jmNdU0

— FNATIC CS (@FNATICCS2) November 27, 2023

The new players

The three players who joined Fnatic on November 27 are bodyy, matys, and kyuubii. The third of these three players was brought in only for a short period of time. After the trial, Fnatic will decide whether to keep him or not.

For bodyy, this is a downgrade but a decent one. He came here from Team Falcons, who are now trying to build a world-class roster and he’s clearly not at that level at this point in his career.

For matys, this is a big upgrade because he came from Team Sampi, which is currently ranked 58^th while Fnatic was in the top 20.

Kyuubii came from Sangal Esports, which is another team that’s never played at the highest level.

Header: Fnatic