The CIS Organization has made a last minute roster change ahead of their PGL Stockholm Major campaign.
Virtus.pro on Twitter have announced that they replaced Sanjar “SANJI” Kuliev with Evgeny “FL1T” Lebedev and have confirmed the following roster change would be put into effect for their upcoming fixture against paiN Gaming in the Challengers stage of the forthcoming PGL CS:GO Major. FL1T was recently placed on the bench by forZe as the latter were unable to qualify for the major. (Note : Virtus.pro have been charged 20% of their RMR rating and have exchanged places with Entropiq on the final match-ups list)
After spending nearly two and a half years with Virtus.pro (previously AVANGAR), SANJI has been cut off from the active squad of Virtus.pro in the wake of middling showings across a plethora of tournaments most notably at the ESL Pro League Season 14 where the Dzhami “Jame” Ali placed in the 13th-14th position followed by a Quarter Final defeat at the hands of Team Liquid at the recently concluded BLAST Premier Fall Showdown. Although Vitrus.pro made it to the PGL Stockholm major, they were only able to secure a contenders spot at the same and would now need to battle out against some top tier teams to make through to the legends stage.
SANJI in the colors of AVANGAR
Formerly AVANGAR, SANJI and team got on a dream run all they way to the finals of the StarLadder Berlin Major despite the fact of having a heavy under-dog tag before going into the event. Soon later they were picked up by Virtus.pro in the second half of 2019 and lived by the prestigious banner by winning the FLASHPOINT Season 2 alongside the Cs_summit 7 in quick succession. The overall performance of Virtus.pro started to dwindle and were never able to sing along with the rhythm, the likes of which we saw during 2019.
As suggested on their website blog, Sergey Glamazda, CEO at Virtus.pro has ruled out this roster change as a permanent shuffle and is yet to determine the fate of SANJI post the conclusion of the PGL Major.
“The Major is the biggest event in CS:GO, the one we’ve been waiting for two years. It’s incredibly important for the club and our fans. We want to achieve the best possible result, and in order to do so the team needs a new impulse. An opportunity to play with Evgeny arose and we decided to seize it. We hope that this will be the impulse we need to play at the peak of our abilities.
No decisions regarding the future of our roster have been made for now. Everything will be clear after the Major when the dust is settled. I want to thank Sanjar. We’ve won tournaments, got into the top-3 of HLTV rankings, and qualified for the Major with him being in our ranks. Our current roster has already achieved a lot and this temporary change should help us reach even higher goals that we set for ourselves.”
-Sergey Glamazda, Chief Executive Officer at Virtus.pro
With this change, Virtus.pro are now :
- Dzhami “Jame” Ali (Captain and In-game leader)
- Alexey “Qikert” Golubev
- Timur “buster” Tulepov
- Mareks “YEKINDAR” Gaļinskis
- Evgeny “FL1T” Lebedev
- Dastan “dastan” Akbayev (Head coach)
