Coldzera to assume in-game leader role on SK Gaming

SK Gaming’s Counter-Strike team is undergoing unprecedented role changes after months of poor results.

Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo is passing on the title of in-game leader to Marcelo “coldzera” David, who was ranked as the number one player in the world in both 2016 and 2017 by HLTV. Coldzera revealed that he’s acquiring the role in an interview with HLTV, following the team’s disappointing last-place finish at IEM Sydney this week. FalleN confirmed the change on Twitter today.

Related: FaZe and C9 suffer upsets, SK eliminated in day one of IEM Sydney

In previous iterations of the SK lineup, coldzera was primarily used by FalleN as a passive playmaker known for his consistent multi-kills and clutching abilities. But now it seems that SK’s team composition is changing entirely, mainly because of their recent signing of former Cloud9 star Jake “Stewie2k” Yip. Stewie2k replaced Epitacio “TACO” de Melo, who acted as a support player before moving to Team Liquid.

Since the change, the team has had trouble both on the server and in person because of the evident language barrier. SK has been communicating in English to compensate for the arrival of Stewie2k—as opposed to speaking normally in Portuguese. Coldzera and Ricardo “boltz” Prass struggle the most with articulating about the game in English, according to coldzera.

Coldzera explained that FalleN wants to focus more on AWPing rather than calling strategies in-game. More importantly, FalleN believes that some of the best teams in the world can read and predict his style of play-calling. The change may be met with several more problems, however, since coldzera’s iconic playmaking skills could be hindered by the change. This occurred for FalleN whenever SK mades changes in 2017, and it was the case on two separate occasions when they brought on Joao “felps” Vasconcellos and Ricardo “boltz” Prass.

“When you play two years in the row, winning everything, people watch your demos, they see how you are playing” coldzera said in an interview with HLTV. “Before they copy it, they also try to understand how your system works. I think that the change will be good.”