After a dream run at IEM Katowice 2019, ENCE did lay their dominance in the first half of 2019. Having won the BLAST Pro Series Madrid 2019 along with two consecutive runner ups at DreamHack Masters Dallas 2019 and IEM Chicago 2019, Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen and company did prove themselves to be worthy and eventually one of the toughest sides to compete against. But they couldn’t live up longer with this success as in August 2019, the team parted its ways with their In-Game Leader Aleksib as they eyed ex-Mousesports player Miikka “sunNy” Kemppi to replace him with. Since then the Team has failed to put up a great showing except for a runner up place at the CS:GO Asia Championships in 2019.
If we all look up at the Team’s composure at the moment, they seem to have suffered a plummet where the team has lost 13 out of their last 15 outings which also do feature losses to Tier 2 teams such as Godsent and Heroic. A part of the community strongly believes that if ENCE hadn’t made that roster swap which saw Aleksib join OG, they would have still been lethal enough to overcome such teams from low tier rankings. According to HLTV’s numbers, ENCE’s win rate has only been 28.6 percent over the past three months followed by just 11 best of one/best of three series, where they have lost 19 matches and drew twice.
We might soon see a roster change that has already been suggested by the fans and the community. But the real question that lies over here is, who would it be? With Aleksi “allu” Jalli leading the team, the duo of sunNy, and Jere “sergej” Jalo might not be feeling worried as they are the only ones who have been serving as a backbone of the team, we might be seeing either Sami “xseveN” Laasanen or Jani “Aerial” Jussila being shown the exit door. If this potential revamp is already being culminated at the horizon, ENCE would face some real-time head-scratching moments to find a perfect replacement for one of its players along with allu who would need to refine his tactical ideas for leading the team to it’s long lost glory.
You can catch up with the team as it would be in action against Astralis in the ESL Pro League Season 11 today at 2:30 AM IST.
