Late into the night after fm-eSports had just finished up against Team-LDLC Blue in the goRGN Pro Invitational qualifiers, some high profile UK players took to twitter and started exchanging cryptic messages with startling connotations. Exchanges between Brandon “weber” Weber and other UK CSGO players began sparking interest, with the contents of the tweets exclaiming that an organisation’s coach had caused the destruction of the UK’s two biggest teams. With Team Infused and fm-eSports both due to take to the stage for their ESL UK Premiership matches this coming Monday, neither team were expecting to be caught short with only a few days left to temporarily repair the damages and compete for their place in the finals.
As it stands, arguably two of the best teams in the UK, fm-eSports and Team Infused, are set to lose a player each to the forming of a new salaried Team Orbit, fronted by Infused’s former coach Neil “NeiL_M” Murphy. The salaried positions were initially offered out to the current fm-eSports squad, who, already down a man, decided to decline the offer and stay within the fm-eSports organisation.
The new team Orbit is rumoured to consist of a Benelux mix, and with two high profile Benelux players currently representing the UK’s best CSGO teams, they were prime candidates to be taken on board for this new salaried position. Thus, fm-eSports are set to lose talented AWPer Mike “mikeS” Tuns, and Team Infused are losing not only their coach and motivator, but also star player Joey “CRUC1AL“ Steusel. This leaves the fm-eSports camp down two men, after all ready losing James “Kryptix” Affleck earlier this month, and Team Infused looking for at least one player and one coach.
However, this may not be all that is in store for Team Infused, with sources stating that the shift in players may have also sparked the departure of Counter-Strike veteran George “hudzG” Hoskins from the Infused side. The validity of this is as of yet unknown, but if true, this leaves the UK’s best two teams two men short with under one week to go before they were to play it out for a share of the £6,000 up for grabs at the MCM Expo this month. If this is the case, the “group of death” in the ESL UK Premiership may have just became a whole lot more straight forward for the invited underdogs GLG and favoured UnitedEstonia.
One thing is for sure, that if the ESL UK Premiership was supposed to be the spark that set the UK CSGO scene off into a resurgence, this shift is a sure way to set it back by more than just a few paces.
This information has come from sources that wish to remain anonymous, and has yet to be officially verified by either organisation, Team Orbit or the players involved. One can only hope that this does not cause two of the UK’s greatest teams to crumble to dust and go their separate ways.
