With the Katowice Major ending and the beginning of the long awaited shuffle season, the Counter-Strike community lie in wait for their favorite teams to begin to change things up and it seems that mousesports has made their move.





mousesports: -oskar, -STYKO, -suNny; +frozen, +karrigan, +woxic





Following their inability to escape the IEM Katowice 2019 European Minor group stage, mousesports sought to radically alter the core of their roster for the first time since the signings of Miikka “suNny” Kemppi and Martin “STYKO” Styk in August of 2017. This decision brought in ex-FaZe Clan in-game leader Finn “karrigan” Andersen, HellRaisers AWPer Özgür “woxic” Eker, and NoChance young-gun David “frozen” Čerňanský.





With that being said, suNny will be moving on with his career in search of a new team to represent, while STYKO is to remain on the mousesports bench until further notice. On the contrary, Tomáš “oskar” Šťastný has being left to free agency by the organization and is free to pursue any options he pleases with no buyout required. Initially, it was Chris “chrisJ” de Jong who was placed on the bench, with oskar being one of the core players to stay. This, however, changed, as talks with these players advanced and the team had to make a decision. It must be noted that team coach Sergey “lmbt” Bezhanov was also moved to an inactive status in the team and took his talents back to his former team in HellRaisers, as we saw a Dexerto report by DeKay name Allan “Rejin” Petersen as their tryout current coach. Rejin has been inactive since the disbanding of his Tricked eSports’ 2017 roster. A tweet from mousesports suggests that Rejin is not the only name thrown into the hat of potential coaches for the team, but we shall see who they decide to stick with moving forwards in due time.





Finn “karrigan” Andersen with FaZe at StarLadder Season 4 (Photo Credit to StarLadder)

+ Finn “karrigan” Andersen





One glaring issue the team always faced was its lack of seasoned and in-depth leadership, with coach lmbt, chrisJ, and the previously named STYKO combining their efforts to structure the team’s plans of attack and defense. Rejin will be able to assist in and out of the servers, but the work that is required form Finn is massive. With karrigan joining the team, the mousesports organization grabs hold of a leader with not only experience under his belt, but big time success as well. He stands as the only leader to have two teams holding the #1 HLTV ranked spot on two separate rosters, with the Team Solomid lineup of 2015 being one and the dreaded FaZe Clan super team of 2017 being the other. Both analysts and players alike have touted him as one of the most cerebral minds to touch the game and it must be said that he has the resume to boot. His countless achievements as a captain make him the obvious player choice to spearhead mouz through the remainder of the year. It is worth mentioning that this will be his third stint with the mousesports organization, not including a two month stand-in period in 2014, since his first appearance with them in Counter-Strike 1.6.





Özgür “woxic” Eker with HellRaisers at Bets.net Masters (Photo Credit to StarLadder)

+ Özgür “woxic” Eker





As we make our way down the chain of seniority in the scene, woxic is the next point of discussion. He has shown his above and beyond AWP talent to have graced the servers and has been an integral part to any success the HellRaisers team featuring him had found. LAN performances from 2018 showed that the star was capable of putting up impressive numbers at any level, scoring a 1.15 rating against top 20 teams and a more than respectable 1.10 rating against top 10 teams. While he has large shoes to fill replacing the nearly three year mousesports’ standing member oskar, there is no doubt in my mind that he will put up the numbers required to assist the team in finding prosperity. His malleability as an individual and room to grow on his own will help mold him into an even more fearsome AWPer for the scene to watch out for.





David “frozen” Čerňanský playing in the Boston 2018 Europe Minor (Photo Credit to ELEAGUE)

+ David “frozen” Čerňanský





With new, young talent seemingly being the name of the game for mousesports, they sought out one who has been fighting to make himself acknowledged in the scene since his 13 years of age. mousesports would be his first professionally salaried team at 16 years of age, an age that only ENCE’s own Jere “sergej” Salo has rivaled in recent history, or CS:GO’s professional history in general. With, what one must assume, a lack of better opportunity, frozen stuck with the core of team eXtatus and later got his chance with the European mix-team of “NoChance”, featuring names like Mikail “Maikelele” Bill and Kevin “kRYSTAL” Amend. As more and more spry young players emerged into top echelon of the game, frozen had begun to fall out of relevance, only regaining steam upon his uniting with the aforementioned NoChance crew.





Looking to the Future





With all that being said, the actual chances of this team exceeding or even meeting the level the previous roster held is up in the air. Core members of the roster are being moved out with this move, with new roles being assumed by the players on all facets of each map. What comes with this move will undoubtedly be a change in the team’s map pool and overall positioning. Names like ropz, chrisJ and woxic have proven themselves as capable fraggers at a high level, and karrigan having shown his capabilities as a leader throughout the years bode well for the team as well. The largest question mark for the team has to be frozen, being unproven at the level these names have been at for some time now. Assuming the team gels together relatively quickly, they should find some footing within a year of hard work and effort. As these young stars continue to develop, they could progress to a level that the other teams in the top 10 have to keep an eye on.





The first match this new mousesports lineup will play in is online on Monday, March 18th with their opponent to be determined. The ESL Pro League Season 9 LAN in April is the only known offline event that mouz will be attending in the coming month, so they will have an ample amount of time to get in practice for any obstacles they may look to overcome in 2019.





This leaves mousesports as:





Robin “ropz” Kool

Chris “chrisJ” de Jong

David “frozen” Čerňanský Finn “karrigan” Andersen

Özgür “woxic” Eker

Allan “Rejin” Petersen (Coach)