"The team wanted me to move as soon as possible so that I could play ESL ESEA Pro League and CEVO, which had already started when we talked about booking everything. So it was a bit stressful, mostly because we recently moved to a new house back in Sweden as well. The move itself wasn't complicated at all, the only thing I brought with me was clothes, gear and the usual things I bring when I travel to events, but this time I packed a little extra seeing as I would be gone a little longer."

"Really happy that I took the leap"

"I'm really happy that I took the leap. I feel like I'm learning a lot right now when I'm playing with my new team, and I also teach my new team mates quite a lot since I have experience from European and Swedish CS."

"It's nice to have a stable income"

"Most american teams have a good salary, something most of the players in Sweden haven't experienced. When I have played for Swedish teams, I've done so without compensation, but here it's normal that all the teams have a good salary to play CS, which I think is huge. It's nice to have a stable income when you do what you love, so you can go all-in."

Transatlantic recruitment — it's a thing





pyth (in the middle) together with SKYTTEN, Maikelele, zende and maxaki in hatersg0Nnahate.

"It's great for Andreas to get the opportunity to do what he loves, I wish him all the best! I think it's great that North American teams recruit Swedish players, they often have more money than a lot of the European organizations, which allows you to go all-in on CS and live off of your passion. Swedish players can also teach the NA teams a lot since players from Sweden often have more "skill" than players from North America. But you shouldn't see past the fact that they are a lot of really good players with huge potential here as well, most players are a lot better than you would think."

"I'm still analyzing the meta, but I think we need to work more on the communication, eliminating all unnecessary info. Other than that, I don't see too many differences from Europe, other than the fact that you don't play as many online matches and don't practice as often as European teams. We just need to work more as a team and practice more maps to develop, we have a long way to go to become the best, but I think we will succeed!"

We're living in a time where the North American Counter-Strike: Global Offensive scene undergoes more shuffles than a week-night in Las Vegas. This has led to a situation where a large amount of top players often seen as super stars switch to lower rated teams, while players with a seemingly mediocre record hahave found themselves in the scene's limelight. One of the often mentioned cards in the deck is the Swedish talent Jacob "pyth" Mourujärvi. The 21-year-old packed his bags and left his home in Trollhättan, Sweden, to try his luck in North America. Toronto, Canada to be more precise. The player who has been representing Team Orbit throughout the beginning of 2015 is now playing under the Luminosity banner.The move to Canada came as a surprise to most people involved in the scene, even though Mourujärvi had just recently left his previous organization. He himself discribes the whole ordeal as very spontaneous, but most of the planning had already been sorted by his, now, employer, who performed most of the tasks necessary for the move.This was three weeks ago, and Mourujärvi has gotten acclimated in Toronto, where he lives in the Luminosity gaming house together with some of his new co-workers. However, some team mates are still missing as the owner, Steve Maida, and the former compLexity and iBUYPOWER player Todd "anger" Williams are the only ones who share the residence with the Swede.Mourujärvi moved close to 6,000 kilometers (approximately 3,700 miles) from home. Even though this distance would be huge for any individual, the 21-year-old hasn't looked back once. The experience he gains and shares with his team mates, is enough to satisfy the Swedish talent.The North American scene isn’t necessarily known to be the best in regards of skill, referring to the fact that their best representatives have struggled to reach the playoffs in the later majors. Neither is the scene that large percentage wise, but it doesn't prevent the business to grow and form in a different way than in Europe.Whilst teams from Europe struggle to find an organization with the economy to pay out salary, North America has a different strategy when it comes to sponsorships. Two examples of this are the Danes in Team SoloMid and the Frenchmen in EnVyUs, two European teams who have found their home in North American organizations. At the same time, a lot of talented players and teams in the European scene have had troubles finding room in the spotlight to get one of the few sponsorships offered due to the wide variety of talent within the region. These problems were present in Mourujärvi's career in Sweden, but have been lifted off of his shoulders together with the move.The new Swedish Luminosity player isn't the only one to be enticed by the possibilities in North America. Last week, pyth's former team mate Andreas "maxaki" Andersson was recruited by the Canadian team ACE Gaming in a similar fashion, together with the coach Robert "LillRobbaN" Jonasson. In other words, it seems like pyth's move to NA was the beginning of a trend.The aforementioned Swedes are definitely not the first ones to move to cross-continent. In previous Counter-Strike versions, European players like Marcus "zet" Sundström, Tomi "lurppis" Kovanen and David "Xp3" Garrido have been headhunted for the same reasons as Mourujärvi and Andersson. However, these recruitments have been made with years in between them, while today's meta seems to be standardization of transatlantic recruitments, similar to the situation in League of Legends and, to some extent, Dota 2.So far, Mourujärvi's visit to Toronto isn't permanent. On the 31st of July he'll return to Sweden, though he's determined to return once again. When being asked about his ambitions with the move to Toronto, his answer is, of course, that he wants to dominate the North American scene and get to play against the world's best teams in majors. But there is a lot of work ahead.If Luminosity will reach the top or not is for the future to decide. If you want to follow the Swede's career in North America, you can do so through his Facebook page Twitter and Twitch , and of course here at Fragbite.