Martin “STYKO” Styk’s team, Inner Circle, is going to be heading to the halls of the Kettering Conference Centre to try and grab some of those all-important VRS points. This sign-up continues the growing trend of European teams making their way to England to compete at EPIC.LAN 45 in an attempt to bolster their standings on the Valve Regional Standings.
If you were to check Inner Circle’s HLTV page, you’d be forgiven for thinking they might be a wingman team, as their roster is only listed as STYKO and Szymon “kRaSnaL” Mrozek. Jokes aside, Inner Circle have in fact bought five tickets to the Kettering event, just the rest of the roster is yet to be announced.
we ended our season today, not much positives to take from. Our main goal was to get into VRS, which we failed. Played all open qualifiers we could, made some deep runs, but never got into main events. Won ESEA Open and made top5 in ESEA Advanced which got stripped off VRS this…
— STYKO (@STYKOcs) June 10, 2025
Inner Circle have had a disappointing first half to 2025. They started the year with a five containing Tomáš “oskar” Šťastný, Marcus “Q-Q” Krolak-Henriksen, and Frederik “Fessor” Sørensen alongside the aforementioned STYKO and kRaSnaL. With this roster, they competed in open qualifiers such as PGL’s Astana and Bucharest as well as two seasons of United21 League.
The quintet’s highlight of the season was a deep run in ESEA Advanced, which saw them fall at the final hurdle to the predominantly Russian team Betera. Their loss to Betera placed them 5-6th in ESEA advanced, just one placing off qualifying for ESL Challenger League Season 50, where they would have had a chance to run the quantlet and qualify for ECL regional finals. A win at the ECL regional finals qualifies whoever is victorious to ESL Pro League season 23.
Unfortunately, Valve kicked Inner Circle while they were down. Despite playing six HLTV matches of ESEA Advanced, the tournament was stripped of its ranked status the very season that Inner Circle qualified. This change made their matches completely inconsequential to their VRS standing, as well as missing out on an ECL cup.
Inner Circle Join the likes of WildLotus, Preasy, and Alliance as one of the European sides looking to compete for VRS in Kettering. Gaining some of the VRS points on offer would be a huge boost to Inner Circle, especially considering that unless the three new players they sign are already a core and bring some VRS points with them, Inner Circle will be starting at square one in regards to ranking points.
