Former aAa and emuLate! member Mathieu "⁠MaT⁠" Leber has been hired by Vitality as an assistant coach, the French organisation have announced.

The 34-year-old brings with him a wealth of experience, having competed at a top level in CS 1.6 between 2004 and 2010. He was part of the iconic emuLate squad that won WCG 2007 over the Danes of NoA, who featured current Astralis coach Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen.

MaT had a short stint in CS:GO with LDLC during the early days of the game and briefly reunited with his former emuLate teammates Mickael "⁠mSx⁠" Cassisi and Jeremy "⁠ioRek⁠" Vuillermet on XenoDragons in 2016 before disappearing off the Counter-Strike map.

MaT hired as an assistant to XTQZZZ

He will be working in tandem with head coach Rémy "⁠XTQZZZ⁠" Quoniam and will presumably take over some of the duties that had been assigned to analyst Renaud "WiPR" Malfait, who was released by Vitality on Monday.

The announcement is the latest high-profile move made by Vitality before the start of the tournament season. On Monday, the French organisation expanded their backroom staff by recruiting three performance experts: Thierry Ascione, a retired tennis player and former coach of Elina Svitolina and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Pier Gauthier, a former tennis player who has spent the last two decades working as a mental coach, and Ludovic Lacay, an ex-poker professional. The trio will be focused on Vitality's CS:GO team first before moving over to the organisation's other divisions.

Vitality will return to action early next month at BLAST Premier, where they will be facing Astralis, Natus Vincere and Complexity in the group stage. The French team will be looking to make a strong start to the year after ending 2019 with a title-winning campaign at EPICENTER, beating mousesports in the final.