Fnatic signs Golden permanently

Fnatic has officially acquired its in-game leader Maikil “Golden” Selim from Cloud9, the organization announced today.

When the 25-year-old joined Fnatic in September on a loan basis alongside Robin “flusha” Rönnquist, there were still doubts if the move would pay off. But Golden and flusha immediately brought Fnatic back to the top when the Swedish squad won DreamHack Masters Malmö in October.

Fnatic kept playing at the highest level through the end of the year, being runners-up at two other big events, the StarSeries i-League season eight in October and ESL Pro League season 10 finals in December.

Now, Golden will start his second stint as a full-time Fnatic player. The in-game leader was discovered by Fnatic’s academy team and brought in for the first time in August 2017. He led the team to victories at IEM Katowice in February 2018 and WESG Finals in March 2018 but ended up being benched when Fnatic signed Richard “Xizt” Landström to be the captain and wanted to sign William “draken” Sundin to replace Golden.

When Golden and flusha signed with the team, Fnatic were almost out of HLTV’s world rankings top 30. Now, they’re ranked as the fourth-best team in the world, just below Astralis, mousesports, and Team Liquid.

The Swedish squad should start the 2020 season with high morale. Their first appearance will be at IEM Katowice from Feb. 25 to March 1. The traditional tournament will be one of the most prestigious events of 2020 since all of the top 10 teams in the world will be in Poland.