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On Friday, European esports outfit Fnatic announced the cessation of their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive academic roster, Fnatic Rising.
“As we enter the 2023 season of Fnatic CS:GO, we’re putting our Academy program on pause and allowing the Rising squad to explore new opportunities. On the Pro Squad, @keitaCSGO & @SamuelssonCSGO are extended throughout 2023,” the team tweeted.
This new development will automatically mark the players on the CS:GO roster as unrestricted free agents. The players departing from the team include Swedish and American AWper Adam “WolfY” Andersson, English rifler Sebastian “volt” Malos, Danish in-game leader Mikkel “Maze” Sparvath, and the 18-year-old Finnish rifler Matias “Banjo” Kivistö.
Fnatic stated in a press release that despite the pause on the academy roster, they are still satisfied with how far they have developed the rookie players because some of the members have moved to main teams and pro rosters. The esports outfit also stated that this pause is to enable them to strategize and figure out the beating they want the CS:GO project to take in the near future.
“With our main objective of the squad to be leveling them to a pro standard, we’re excited to see multiple members of the squad graduate to main teams,” Fnatic said. “With this said, we’ll be putting a pause on the Fnatic Rising squad as these players graduate and other contracts expire. Putting the roster on pause may come as a surprise, but we want to take the time to best strategize about our place in the CS:GO Academy leagues to best benefit both the players who enter the program and also Fnatic’s overarching strategy. We are immensely proud of this program, and have proven its success time and time again, and will provide new updates when we have them.”
Following Fnatic’s three-year absence from junior-level tournaments, the Fnatic Rising project was born in 2021 and provided the players with the chance to participate in six seasons of the WePlay Academy League, the top event for academy squads.
In the press release, the European esports outfit also recounted the successes of the team, highlighting the ground-breaking moment when they won Season 5 of the WePlay Academy.
“As we tackled the last year, we also saw great success in our Fnatic Rising roster, our academy team where we aim to level up the youngest talent & prodigies in the game, using our world class facilities and high performance unit. The team saw a huge moment in winning WePlay Academy Season 5, and saw strong finishes across the league’s other seasons and additionally within smaller tournaments.
Finally, the esports outfit bid the departing players farewell and wished them well in their future endeavors.
“A huge thank you to WolfY, Maze, Volt, Banjo and Peppzor for representing us so well over the last year, as well as thank you to all players who have played & now graduated from the Rising programme. We wish you all the best going forward, and are proud to have been a part of your promising careers. Once Fnatic, #ALWAYSFNATIC,” the team wrote.
Currently, it is unknown what teams the free agent players will be joining, but it is likely that some of them may end up on professional teams.
