Less than two weeks after retiring from VALORANT competition as a player, former CS:GO pro Damian “daps” Steele is returning to Counter-Strike to coach Evil Geniuses, the organization announced today. Daps will fill a vacancy left by legendary Brazilian coach Wilton “zews” Prado, who left the EG camp by mutual decision at the beginning of June.
Daps is a familiar face among the members of EG’s roster. He filled the in-game leader role for NRG’s CS:GO team for almost two years alongside current EG players Vincent “Brehze” Cayonte and Tsvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov. In June 2019, NRG made a change by replacing him with former Complexity/OpTic leader Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz just months before the players were acquired by EG.
After his replacement, daps spent the remainder of 2019 with Cloud9 before the organization’s ATK roster experiment and the Colossus era, then spent most of 2020 with a talented Gen.G team. Daps’ contract with Gen.G expired in September, and like many NA CS:GO pros, he turned his sights toward VALORANT and relinked with the NRG camp.
With his playing days behind him for now, daps is returning to CS:GO in a coaching role, leading two of his former teammates as well as the in-game leader who replaced him two years ago. The current EG CS:GO roster is rounded out by the young NA rifler Owen “oBo” Schlatter and former Envy entry fragger Michał “MICHU” Müller. Once considered a top-10 team throughout all of 2020, EG have struggled to retain their form in 2021 amid several roster moves, including both Ethan and tarik leaving the starting roster.
Daps will evidently make his coaching debut at the beginning of July in the play-in stage of IEM Cologne.
