Astralis confirmed the official departure of three of their members – Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen, Emil ‘Magisk’ Reif and coach Danny ‘zonic’ Sørensen. The trio’s contracts were set to expire in January but they departed the org ahead of time.
They are expected to join Team Vitality, as reported by 1pv.fr back in November, to replace Richard ‘shox’ Papillon, Jayson “Kyojin” Nguyen Van, and head coach Rémy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam. Vitality already confirmed the release of the three after their exit from BLAST Premier World Finals.
The journey for dupreeh, Magisk and zonic comes to an end with Astralis, after spending 5 years with the organisation (3 for Magisk) and winning every possible trophy they could, establishing the most dominant era by a team ever in CS:GO. dupreeh and zonic won 4 Majors with Astralis, the most by any team or player, with 3 of them coming consecutively. Their first, ELEAGUE Major Atlanta was won in 2017 with ‘kjaerbye’ still on the team.
After signing Magisk in 2018, Astralis went on a run that will be hard to replicate for many years to come. Together, they won the FACEIT London Major 2018, IEM Katowice Major 2019and StarLadder Berlin Major in 2019, alongside a whole cabinet of trophies ranging from ESL Pro League to BLAST Pro Series and of course, becoming the first team to ever win the Intel Grand Slam.
Things looked bleak for Astralis in 2020, especially when Lukas ‘gla1ve’ Rossander and Andreas ‘xyp9x’ Højsleth were on leave. But they ended the year on a high, winning ESL Pro League S12, DreamHack Masters Winter 2020 and IEM Global Challenge to once again become the #1 team of the year.
Sadly the form wouldn’t be replicated going into 2021. The team only had 1 Grand Finals appearance, BLAST Premier Global Finals 2020 and zero trophies. It was then that AWPer Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz decided to step down and join NiP. things didn’t get any better throughout the rest of the year as Astralis looked weak versus the world’s best. The team couldn’t make it to the playoffs of the Major either, and that was it for the core.
Shortly after Benjamin ‘blameF’ Bremer and Chrisitan ‘k0nfig’ Wiencke were signed, alongside coach ‘ave’, which saw ‘dupreeh’, ‘Magisk’ and ‘zonic’ on the bench as they decided not to renew their contracts.
Astralis CSGO Roster:
- Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander
- Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth
- Philip “Lucky” Ewald
- Benjamin “blameF” Bremer
- Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke
- Alexander “ave” Holdt (coach)
- Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen (benched)