Academy teams in CSGO have taken on more importance compared to the past. Big dogs of the Esports world such as fnatic, Counter Logic Gaming, and North have recruited academies, either past or at present. While they aren’t usually invited to big tournaments, the academies attend most qualifiers either under the same organization banner or separately, depending on the tournament organizer. The intended objective is to scout talents and see if a player, be it AWPer, rifler or in-game leader, is worthy of promotion to the main team. If they aren’t suited, then the team is dropped from the payroll and become free agents. If one player is a suitable candidate, they are promoted and the four remaining players either play with a replacement or leave the organization. The Swedish squadron fnatic picked up an Academy team in August 2016. However, their structure was different. They decided to pick up promising players from other teams. Only Maikil ‘Golden’ Selim and Linus ‘Bååten’ Andersson had played together before. Compared to the usual method, which is picking up an up-and-coming, this approach is more time consuming and requires a scout to individually evaluate each player instead of five players at once. However, it gives an impression to the players that fnatic truly wanted them and handpicked them to be their academy team. Contrast to other teams’ approach of it being a business transaction. This, in theory, boosts the team’s morale and raises the team performance. It paid off, as the fnatic Academy produced some of the best results from an academy in their existence. Their first significant offline achievement was a tournament win at 2016 China Top, winning 2-0 against Koreans, MVP Project. Their next LAN achievement also occurred in China, losing 0-2 in the China Cup I grand final against TyLoo. Their last LAN achievement was a group stage exit at the PGL Europe Minor in 2017, losing closely to Team EnVyUs in the decider best of 3 series. They played under the Ballistix banner, after being forbidden to play under the same org as the main fnatic team. The team began to unravel as David ‘Jayzwalkingz’ Kempner left to stand-in for Australian team Renegades in early August. After that, fnatic decided they needed to make roster changes after a quarter-final exit from the PGL Krakow Major. Golden was called up from the Academy to replace Dennis ‘dennis’ Edman’s spot on the storied team. fnatic opted to fill the remaining roster spot with GODSENT player Jonas ‘Lekr0′ Olofsson, leaving the Academy’s future in doubt. Indeed, the remaining three players’ contracts ran out, leaving them free agents, and the end of the fnatic Academy adventure. It concluded with one player recruited, one sold off to another team, and the last three let go. A relatively fruitful and lucrative project, as fnatic found a cheap Swedish in-game leader, something that seems to be a rarity. Spirit or specter? Russian based organization Team Spirit decided to take the easier route of picking up an academy and hired Team1337 on 9th May 2017. The Team1337 roster didn’t have many achievements on LAN or against big teams. They failed to qualify for the ELEAGUE Atlanta 2017 CIS Minor. The team looked like a questionable pickup, but they won the PGL Krakow CIS Minor Closed qualifier Group C, in a group that included Elements Pro Gaming. That team became the core of Quantum Bellator.Fire, who eventually achieved a top 8 placing at the most recent Major, ELEAGUE Boston 2018. At the CIS Minor, they didn’t achieve much of note and eventually bowed out to Kazakhstani team Tengri in the Group A decider match. However, they managed to place ahead of the main Spirit team, though they were in different groups. The team won the EPICENTER 2017 CIS Open qualifier to advance to the Closed qualifier. Again, the team didn’t achieve anything of note other than taking a map off Flipsid3 in their best of 3. At this point, Aleksey ‘BAS’ Kustov and Aleksey ‘NickelBack’ Trofimov were benched. Eventually it was revealed they had joined forZe and Elements Pro Gaming, respectively. The remaining three players played with two stand-ins but were only able to win a handful of small online tournaments. The team eventually left the Team Spirit organization on the 11th of December.

The team produced little meaningful results, but the organization benefited from this experience. The transfer list was large, as Team Spirit sold BAS, NickelBack and Dmitry ‘iksou’ Mihailichenko, who was the team’s coach. Iksou eventually became the coach of QB.Fire, achieving more results with that project. The main point is that Team Spirit sold them as consolation, though it is clear they didn’t elevate the team’s standing. None of them made it onto the main Spirit team, and they were released as free-agents. Currently, the three play under the banner of Espada, along with the two stand-ins.

Counter to logic

As proven by Team Spirit, this model of acquiring academy teams usually doesn’t result in success. Like Spirit, Counter Logic Gaming picked up an academy team to supplement their main CS:GO team in February 2017. The organization picked up Premier Rejects, a team that competed in the ESEA Mountain Dew League. The team attended Fragadelphia 11 but lost out on the top 4, and prize money, to Joshua ‘steel’ Nissan’s Bee’s Money Crew. The team also lost out on the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier and DreamHack Denver qualifiers, prompting the removal of Chase ‘mcs’ Sullivan and Victor ‘cardiac’ Kwan and adding Gage ‘infinite’ Green and Zechrie ‘XotiC’ Elshani. The change yielded absolutely no improvement, as they ended ESEA MDL S26 in the relegation seeds, a step down from their 12th place the previous season.

However, following Pujan ‘FNS’ Mehta and Ricardo ‘Rickeh’ Mulholland’s departure from the main CLG team, there were rumours that XotiC was set to move up to the main team before CLG’s last-minute withdrawal from the CS scene. Indeed, he played with the remaining CLG players and Ronnie ‘ryx’ Bylicki at CyberPowerPC Extreme Gaming Series Winter 2017. However, they played under the Unemployed for Christmas moniker as CLG had dropped the team. The team beat the likes of GX and Splyce, but lost to Cloud9 in the final. It’s unfortunate that CLG did not stick around to use the player they developed. Effectively, they threw away the resources developing the team and the investment instead went to Splyce, as they met XotiC’s buyout amount. CLG did receive money for most of their players, but Alex ‘aproto’ Protopapas and the other three were released from their contracts for free.

Princes of the North

Team EnVyUs and North followed fnatic’s example in building academy teams. North picked two pairs who played together and picking a promising fifth to round out the roster. Their strong online performance led to the team making the ESEA MDL S25 playoffs. North Academy managed to take a map off Space Soldiers but ultimately lost. The team made roster changes and it immediately boosted the team’s performance, as they stormed through the DreamHack Winter 2017 Open and Closed EU qualifiers. Although they lost both their matches in the main event, they were close affairs and it was invaluable experience going up against BIG and mousesports.

North benefited similarly to fnatic and received a coach and even a main AWPer, something that was missing from Mathias ‘MSL’ Lauridsen’s teams for a while. Daniel ‘mertz’ Mertz was tasked with replacing Rene ‘cajunb’ Borg. Mertz averaged a 1.22 rating in his 7-month tenure with the Academy. He showed his potential as a top-level AWPer, even if playing against lower tier teams. Cajunb was not a main AWPer but MSL forced him into the role, and it will be a boost to have a player like mertz, who is comfortable on the big green rifle. North were able to acquire and nurture him on the cheap and at 19 years old, his best days are still to come. We can conclude that North’s academy investment was a success, and they kept the team, reaffirming their commitment to finding Danish talent.

The boys in bleu

EnVyUs’ expedition was identical to North, not picking a premade team and instead collating two pairs of players, with chemistry and picking up a fifth to complete the team. The team became active on the eve of May in 2017. Their first achievement at LAN was winning the ESL Championnat National Summer 2017, a minor event. They also won the Winter version to qualify for ESEA MDL S27 Europe, where they currently stand at a 5-0 record. Their biggest LAN win by far was Gfinity Elite Series UK – Season 2, where they took down Epsilon Esports in the grand final and earned a big payday of £40,000.

Ali ‘hAdji’ Haïnouss stood out with a 1.28 rating at LAN and 1.22 online, a key rifler for EnVyUs Academy. He also stood in for the main EnVyUs team when a player was unavailable, making him the natural pick when the French roster decided to undergo changes and remove Alexandre ‘xms’ Forte and Christophe ‘SIXER’ Xia from the roster. EnVyUs management executed a swap similar to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Daniil Kvyat moving to the sister team of Toro Rosso in Formula 1. HAdji was promoted to the main team, while SIXER was demoted to the academy, a huge morale hit to the 26 year old AWPer. The team looks to aim big, with a valuable young player and Fabien ‘kioShiMa’ Fiey returning to the team after a two year absence.



Are academies worth it?

Academies done right can be proved by fnatic, North and EnVyUs. They chose the route of recruiting a few players with chemistry, then fill out the roster with the best upcoming talent possible. The choice taken by CLG, Spirit, Rogue, Ghost Gaming, and Flipsid3, proved to be inferior, as it showed less effort by the orgs and didn’t produce any results, as the players were playing with the same old teammates and never gaining new insight. This approach was far more cynical; it appeared to be less focused on producing and promoting new players and more focused on picking up a team, just to claim that they had an academy. Fnatic, North and EnVyUs actually had faith in their players, rewarding their chosen one with a role in their main team. They showed, once and for all, that this was the only way to operate a successful academy team in CS:GO.