Late last week, Cloud9 terminated the contracts of the remaining players who they had signed from ATK back in January. Only two players from the former roster remain contracted; Ricky “floppy” Kemery & Josh “oSee” Ohm. Whilst floppy has signed a new contract with the org in the new Cloud9 roster, his former team mate has not, but still remains contracted. His contract not being terminated comes because he doesn’t live in the team house. This leaves uncertainty for the South African trio who will now need to find a new team in 30 days, or return home. Johnny “JT” Theodosiou & Ian “motm” Hardy have already announced their free agency. Cloud9 letting go of its entire roster isn’t unfamiliar to anyone.
Cloud9, by anyone’s standards, have made some bizarre choices over the last few years with their CSGO rosters. You only have to look as far back as the 2018 Boston Major to see where the organisations inconsistency begun. As North America’s only CSGO Major winners, at the time of writing, Cloud9 pulled off something remarkable. Not only did they make history, they shocked the world by shutting down the most feared mixed roster to have ever existed. FaZe Clan. A team that managed to achieve such a feat just weren’t able to hold together. Just 2 months after their extraordinary Major win, Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham & Jacky “Stewie2k” Yip announced their departure from the team. Tarik “tarik” Celik had criticised Stewie2k for leaving for a move to MIBR. However, a few months later he joined the same team.
Cloud9 Look for European Help
Cloud9 have homed 4 more rosters since their Major win. Most notably would be the signing of current Fnatic duo, Maikil “Golden” Selim & Robin “flusha” Rönnquist. These players would be interchanged for the following next two majors – the London FACEIT Major and IEM Katowice 2019. If one Major Champion wasn’t enough, they also went on to sign Fabien “kioShiMa” Fiey. These two Major’s made it clear Cloud9 cared more about appearing at the Major, than the result. It wasn’t long before they dropped their entire team in the hope of a reformation. In December of 2019, the organisation brought in veteran IGL, Damian “daps” Steele. That didn’t last very long either.
Flashpoint’s first season was about the start, and with it came the signing of ATK. Representing a new name, the South African core placed an impressive 4th. Unfortunately, COVID caused the tournament to become online. During Flashpoint’s lifetime being offline, Cloud9 looked extremely strong. It could be argued they would’ve gone on to win the entire event had it not been affected by the pandemic. The results weren’t good enough for the organisation from this point on and the contracts were recently terminated. Now with Flashpoint’s second season on the horizon, Cloud9 look to bolster a new roster. A well known face leads the team as General Manager, ex-caster Henry “HenryG” Greer.
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A New Standard for Esports
Not only are Cloud9 looking to home 5 of the best players CSGO has to offer, it also looks to change the way the signing of players is handled. Every signing the org has made also features a tweet from HenryG displaying full transparency of the contract. This is a first in CSGO and hopefully it will begin to set a precedent for future deals. Fellow Englishman, Alex “ALEX” McMeekin, started the rebuild.
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Cloud9 now consists of:
- Ricky “floppy” Kemery
- Alex “ALEX” McMeekin
- William “mezii” Merriman
- Özgür “woxic” Eker
- Patrick “es3tag” Hansen
Cloud9 have just started their boot camp in preparation for Flashpoint Season 2. It is going to be interesting to see how this new line-up will perform. Only time will tell if the new Cloud9 can take on the current top dogs dominating Europe.
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