After agreeing to sell Robin “ropz” Kool to Team Vitality and essentially making them the most dominant team in CS2, FaZe Clan started to struggle. Their results went from good to slightly disappointing and something eventually had to be done.
Since the beginning of the year, FaZe Clan finished 7th – 8th at IEM Katowice, 4th at PGL Cluj-Napoca, 9th – 12th at BLAST Open Spring, 3rd at PGL Bucharest, 7th – 8th at IEM Melbourne, and 5th – 6th at BLAST Rivals Spring.
These results are not bad but they’re not great either. For FaZe Clan, a team that finished 2nd in both Majors last year, they are definitely disappointing.
The Attempted Solution
It seems that FaZe Clan’s management has decided to take advantage of the fact that Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev wants to return to playing professional CS after a break of one and a half years and loaned him from Natus Vincere.
In order to bring in s1mple, Finn “karrigan” Andersen had to bench Helvijs “broky” Saukants, who has been part of the team since 2019. Karrigan called this the roughest benching of his career, probably because broky did not deserve to be benched.
It may work, but it’s not guaranteed to work. After all, s1mple had already tried to save other teams during the last 18 months and failed. That aside, he’s still one of the best players to ever touch the game, and could easily make a comeback if he decides to dedicate himself to regaining his former strength.
At the moment, there are quite a few formidable players in CS2, as well as half a dozen world-class teams that are very hard to beat. To make a true comeback and change FaZe Clan’s results in a major way, s1mple will need to train and play hard for the remainder of the year.
It doesn’t sound that difficult but the truth is that he is now quite wealthy, so he may not be as driven as he used to be in his early twenties.
With players of s1mple’s caliber, motivation is key. The potential is definitely there and nobody should underestimate it. In his glory days, he used to be as good as Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut. The question now is, will he play for the Clan like a reanimated Madara or will he be just another pro player?
