Sprout part ways with raalz and Spiidi

In recent days, Sprout has caused stir in the CS:GO community with its two roster moves. Just one day after the departure of Timo “Spiidi” Richter, the German organization announced that the in-game leader Rasmus “raalz” Steensborg is also leaving the team.

After 5 years and 1380 maps played, Spiidi was the last remaining player who was a part of the very first Sprout roster.

Spiidi CS:GO history

Spiidi has played for several German teams since 2012, including mousesports and PENTA Sports. At the end of 2015, he played in his most successful time at mousesports together with players like Chris “chrisJ” de Jong, Johannes “nex” Maget, Nikola “NiKo” Kovač and his longtime companion Denis “denis” Howell. 

In April 2017, Spiidi had to sit on the mousesports bench and later in October, he joined team Seed together with former PENTA Esports players Kevin “kRYSTAL” Amend, Jesse “zehN” Linjala, Pawel “innocent” Mocek and Denis “denis” Howell. Tobias “tow b” Herberhold was hired as a coach. 

Just two months later, Sprout emerged from the Seed. As the company team of the Caseking brand, the team went on a title hunt. In January 2018, they qualified directly for the Major in Boston, which to this day remains the only Major appearance for Sprout. In fact, the team has never been able to win anything big internationally. Although they often attended prominent tournaments, they usually finished in the group stage. That said, they were mostly untouchable at German tournaments. Even in matches against BIG, they were often even or even won. 

Over the years, Spiidi played in many different line-ups. They tried it with a German line-up, a few times with a Danish line-up and now, the 26-years-old German leaves an international team. With raalz, Fritz “slaxz-” Dietrich, Laurentiu “lauNX” Tarlea and Victor “Staehr” Staehr, he most recently reached place 19 in HLTV’s rankings, which is only three spots lower than the highest rank that Sprout ever achieved.

raalz leaves Sprout too 

On August 1, Sprout announced on Twitter that raalz would like to look for new CS:GO opportunities. The 27-year-old Dane joined Sprout from Lyngby Vikings a year ago and has since re-established the English language on the team. His greatest successes with Sprout were above all the promotion to the ESL Pro League and qualification for the Play-Ins of IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne. In Germany, he was able to lead his team to two consecutive ESL championships and was also crowned champion of the UNITED Pro Series. However, he could not win an international offline tournament with Sprout.

Before joining Sprout, raalz played for numerous teams and was known early on as a great talent on the Danish scene. It was not for nothing that he actually played in the first two CS:GO Majors — at Dreamhack 2013 in Jönköping and then in 2014 when he played at the Major in Katowice along with the likes of Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander, Philip “aizy” Aistrup Larsen,  Jacob “Pimp” Winneche and Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen.

What’s next for Sprout?

Following the two departures, the current Sprout line-up consists only of three players — Victor “Staehr” Staehr and Laurentiu “lauNX” Tarlea and Fritz “slaxz-” Dietrich. According to rumours, the Finnish organization ENCE might be interested in lauNX to possibly fill the gap left by Spinx. However, there is no further information on this yet.

While it is still unclear who will take over the roles of raalz and Spiidi, another rumor has it that Sprout is again interested in a Danish majority line-up. The team will start the new CS:GO season on August 16, 2022, with the kickoff of the ESL Challenger Series Season 42. 

It will be interesting to see who Sprout chooses to sign next, as there is probably not enough potential in the German market to set up an internationally competitive line-up. After the departure of raalz, it has become a little more unlikely that the org will take the step towards a Danish line-up again.

Header: Sprout