2016 saw quite a lot of changes for the Fnatic CS:GO lineup so now is a great time to check what exactly happened and what the results of those changes were.
November 2015: The first roster change
We catch up with Fnatic in November 2015 as they have just replaced pronax with Dennis. It was a change the team deemed necessary after a disappointing result at DreamHack Open in October. It was also the first change to the line-up in a very long time as the last one dated from June 2014 when KRIMZ and Olofmeister joined the team instead of Devilwalk and Schneider.
From that point onwards, Fnatic started chaining victories together. They won their group in the i-League Starseries Qualifiers as well as finishing first in the main event. The same thing happened in Fragbite Masters Season 5 and at the ESL Expo in Barcelona, be it in a lives-based format instead. Early March, the team reached their highest point yet and won the Intel Extreme Masters Season 10 World Championship.
A month later something seemed off for Fnatic during the Columbus Major and in the days after the event it was announced that a wrist injury for Olofmeister was responsible for the dip in the teams performance. While awaiting Olof’s return, Fnatic introduced PlesseN to the team but replaced him again shortly after by Wenton.
On June 13th it was announced that Olofmeister would be making his return to the Fnatic starting line-up for ELEAGUE Season 1, where they finished in second place. In between matches, the team also participated in ESL One Cologne where they put up an okay performance but got knocked out by Liquid, ending in a 3rd/4th place overall. With the expectations as high as they were for Olof’s return and the expected return to their status of best team in the world, these results were not quite good enough and they increased the pressure to perform as well.
August 2016: The biggest change so far
On August 15th, the shocking news came that JW, Flusha and KRIMZ were leaving Fnatic for GODSENT and got traded for Lekr0 and Twist, while also picking up Wenton again. It was a trade that made no sense to Fnatic fans but one that was necessary for the team, as they stated internal difficulties as the reason for the roster swaps.
With only a week to practice under their belt, the team had their first showing during the ESL Pro League season 4, which they managed to finish in first place, securing a spot in the finals.Outside of the League the team also participated in ESL One New York and EPICENTER 2016, where they ended 5-6th in both.
After evaluating their performance, it was decided to trade back Lekr0 for KRIMZ which in turn also gave back Fnatic their Major status. This was good news for Fnatic but at the same time they also had to drop out of the ESL Pro Series Finals and play ELEAGUE Season 2 with a sub due to personal reasons surrounding Dennis.
As we hope these issues get sorted soon, we look forward to seeing Fnatic play once again with a big part of the original LGB lineup who was very successful in the past. It’s going to be an exciting 2017!
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